


Fall Back Into Place

by lillianempire



Category: A Separate Peace - John Knowles
Genre: 1940s, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Anal Sex, Angst and Feels, Angst and Romance, Angst with a Happy Ending, Average 3500 words per chapter, Blow Jobs, Boys In Love, Boys Kissing, Declarations Of Love, Emotional Sex, Falling In Love, First Kiss, First Love, First Time, First Time Blow Jobs, Fluff and Angst, Forbidden Love, Gay, Gay Romance, Gay Sex, Gene and Finny are totally into each other, Gene is honest with himself and his feelings, Gene is less of an asshole, Geneas, Hand Jobs, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Making Love, Making Out, Male Homosexuality, Medium Length, Mutual Masturbation, No one gets seriously injured, Oral Sex, POV First Person, Period-Typical Homophobia, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romantic Angst, Sappy, Semi-Public Sex, Semi-smutty later on, Sexual Content, Teen Angst, Teen Romance, Teenage Drama, World War II, and it's awesome, ginny-ASP, historical gay romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:02:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21643378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lillianempire/pseuds/lillianempire
Summary: Follows the novel at some point then quickly diverges into an alternate universe where Gene and Finny are honest with their feelings and their desire for each other. And the tree thing? NEVER HAPPENS! But there is lots of angst and doubt leading up to a happy ending. First person narrative - Gene POV and Finny POV.============================================================================Medium-long read: 4-5 hours beginning to end | ~3500 words per chapterThank you for reading!
Relationships: Gene Forrester/Phineas "Finny"
Comments: 50
Kudos: 78





	1. Chapter 1

We swim in the early afternoon hours, when the sun is just ripe enough, heaving its intolerable heat upon creation. Scorched grass, it crunches under our feet, and the river is a welcome relief. I can only enjoy myself for so long before I begin to worry. I worry over the reading I have left to do and the trigonometry exercises that I have not completed. They grow large in my mind like a vine until I crawl upon the bank and take refuge in the shade of the tree.

Finny is the first to notice I have gotten out. He calls to me, but I lay back and gaze through the tree branches of broken sunshine and intrusive shade. From this angle, laying flat on my back, I can see how high the branch is now. The branch I nearly fell from until Finny grabbed me, saving me from a fall that could have killed me. At the very least, I would have broken my arm or my leg. I stare up at the limb. I hear my name again - _Forrester?_ \- and I contemplate that moment. I contemplate Finny’s quick thinking, reflexes, and strength. And why, I wonder, did he not let me fall?

There is a sound near me, and I look to see Finny sitting down beside me. He smells of river water, damp and earthy, it drips down his arms, rivulets running down his chest, out of his hair and down his neck, and the thought strikes me, enters my brain, invades and overcomes, so quickly it takes my breath away.

I imagine him laying over me. River water dripping from his body onto mine, staring down at me with those emerald eyes, the scent of sweat and earth, and he touches me. He touches my skin, my face, my hair. He touches me, and I touch him back. I run my fingers through his hair and my hands upon his golden skin and it is so real and it is so sudden and it is so jarring I feel my ears flush and my cheeks grow warm. My heart begins a frantic rhythm and I realize he is speaking to me now but I cannot focus on his words and I cannot push away this sudden vision. Of him and me, laying here as if we were lovers, laying here as if we might -

“Taking a break already?” Finny says.

I sit up.

“It’s only been like fifteen minutes,” he continues.

I look around for my clothes, hiding my face, I do not want to look directly at him. “I need to go read. I need to finish the _Iliad_.”

“What?” He laughs. “Right now? You have all evening to read.”

“If I get my reading done now, then I’ll have all evening for trigonometry.” I get dressed and make my way towards the dorms. I expect him to call after me, I want him to call after me, but all I know for certain is that he’s watching me.

With emerald eyes and wet skin.

* * *

I cannot sleep.

Finny was soundly asleep by eleven, his soft hair sinking into his pillow, and his breathing, rhythmic and gentle, keeping me awake. Keeping me here. Keeping himself in my thoughts, and I think it must be some conspiracy. I look over at him. Who is he to make me think of him when I do not want to? Who is he to lay there when there is such a mess in my head? Who is he to sit beside me, to save me from falling, to look at me, to speak to me, and I can’t get any of it out of my mind?

I get out of bed. I sit down at the desk and open the _Iliad_. It’s nearly two in the morning, and I decide to light a candle or two rather than wake Finny with the lamplight. After only two paragraphs, I realize it’s no use. I retain nothing, and it’s so late. How did it get so late? I check the time again and see a whole hour has gone by. I close the book in frustration, blow out the candles, and sit there. I watch the candle smoke curl up into the air, and I hear Finny stir in his bed.

I quickly open the book again and flick on the lamp.

Finny turns over, the sheets rustle. “Gene?” His voice is thick with sleep.

I flip a page I have not read at all. “Yes?”

I hear him sit up. “What time is it?”

“Late,” I reply.

He is quiet for a moment or two and then he’s standing behind me, peering over my shoulder.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” I say. I turn to him.

He looks at me, puzzled. “You’re reading? At three in the morning?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“I see.” Although he doesn’t see. I can tell. I want him to see. I want - for just a second - to be transparent. I want for just a second the door to open. Then I can always close it back. I nod imperceptibly at my own thoughts. I can always close it back.

He lays a hand on my shoulder. My throat swells.

“Try and get some sleep,” he says. He squeezes. Just a little. Just in a friendly way. Just in a way my father would do. Just in a way a friend, a fellow classmate, a roommate would do.

I give him a nod.

He gets back into bed, and I do not move at all. Everything is still. Everything is different.

“We should take a trip. You and me,” he says lazily, tucking his hands under his pillow. One of his eyes catches me, catches the lamplight, and I’m caught. “What do you think?”

I scratch an itch. “Okay.”

* * *

The beach is serene.

I wonder if I drank too much beer. I wonder if that’s why I can’t take my eyes off him as he talks. I wonder what he thinks of that. I wonder what he thinks of today.

The sand is warm and the waves are loud. I lay back and tuck my hands under my head, listening to Finny and stargazing as if I am in a dream. He tells me this is what you do with your best pal and then he tells me that is what I am to him. I look at him, expectant, as if there will be more. He looks at me in the same manner. And then I remember I would not have almost fallen from the tree if Finny hadn’t convinced me to climb it in the first place. I remember that we have skipped school, gone hours out of our way, and I still have a test to study for. I realize that he is oblivious, and I am losing myself. I am losing myself in him.

And just like that, the dream is over, and I feel like a fool. Finny’s words hang between us, spinning like planets, and I let them stay there. I let them spin, and spin, and spin, and I watch the disappointment, the slight confusion, fall over his features like a curtain. I turn away from him, and he turns away from me. I grasp at his words one last time, one final immersion, slipping and sliding through my thoughts, before I let them crash into the ocean.

* * *

I wake with the sun.

I lay still for a time, watching it come over the waves in golden yellows and baby blues. My head is clear, I am content, and then I recall last night. I am torn in the first few minutes of a new day, incomplete.

I feel as if his words are still spinning between us, and I could take them. I could take them into my hands and hold them there, like something fragile, and nurture them, keep them safe.

Then there’s a shadow, the sun is blocked out, and Finny is on top of me, leaning over, each arm on either side of me. His eyes shine and he grins like one who has never known any pain.

It was my first instinct, one I felt compelled to have, to act on. Otherwise, what if I am being fooled? What if this is a grand joke he has come up with and I fall for it, fall into humiliation? I was not ready. I was not expecting it. That was the instinct, the thought, that made me push him off me.

I push. I push him down, and I scramble to my feet, standing over him. “What are you doing?” I shout.

His smile fades, and he looks up at me. He looks almost afraid. He looks almost like he might cry. “I just - I just wanted to see if you were awake.”

I stand there, and I don’t know what I was ready for. I don’t know what I was accusing him of. Blood and adrenaline shoot through my veins. I cannot take his expression. I feebly, awkwardly tell him that he scared me, that I had just opened my eyes, and he scared me.

He stands to his feet and brushes sand from his legs. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” His voice is gentle and full of concern. Concern and gentleness for me. I feel a surge inside me, a longing. Why did I shove him like that? And I look at him, he recovers so quickly, back to being Finny, back to seeing me as a best pal, a confidante, trustworthy, and unblemished.

I feel ashamed.

“I’m sorry I pushed you,” I say.

His face brightens again. “You want to go for a swim? Before we head back?”

I shake my head. He grins at me, shrugs. He strips all the way down to his underpants, and runs into the tide. I sit on the sand and watch him sinking into the heavy waves like a baptism at sea. Before long he is whooping and hollering, jumping waves and swimming across them as if he might tame them. As if the ocean might know the name of Phineas and will do his bidding.

_Phineas, commander of ocean waves._

I stand and see a slight sunburn on my arms and legs.

_Phineas, pulling islands up from the bottom of the sea with a simple movement of his hand._

I press the reddening skin with the pad of my thumb. It turns white.

_Phineas, he tames the sharks and they close their mouths, they are obedient, as if he is Daniel in the lion’s den._

The sun is merely a young, yellow ball of light hovering over the water, but my skin feels as if it’s burning. Burning with a longing, burning with a knowledge, burning with something I cannot put into words.

I peel off my clothes and run into the water. Finny shouts at me, laughing. I dive under a wave and break the surface. The water is cold, but it soothes my burning skin. I push wet hair from my eyes as Finny swims over to me. “Forrester!” He laughs and laughs, he splashes me with water. I splash him back, and for a time that’s all there is - Finny and I splashing and laughing in the tide. I have never seen anyone with so much joy. Why must I be suspicious of him?

He comes so close to me, I catch the scent of salt water in his hair. Emerald eyes that somehow match the water and the sky all at once. His knee brushes against mine under the surface, and something inside me breaks, shatters.

“Finny,” I say.

He circles me. “Gene.”

“Finny. You’re my best friend, too.”

He circles around me then stops. His face is solemn and serious. He lays a hand on my shoulder, squeezing, and my legs weaken in the water.

_Phineas, making the ground disappear underneath unsuspecting feet._

He withdraws his hand and swims around me, and I think is that all there is? Is that all there will be? He’s all around me, and this is all it will be. And I don’t know what else can exist, I don’t know how else to feel, but isn’t this enough? I ask myself that time and time again. Isn’t this enough?

I float on my back, and Finny swims beside me chattering away about war, and games, and trees, and life, and how he is so happy I accompanied him. I sink under the water, slip beneath a wave that carries me to the beach, and I emerge, new.

Baptized.

Unblemished.

* * *

It’s late. Again.

The hours creep by and I feel that it should at least be close to dawn. I peek at the clock, squinting in the moonlight and see it is only after one in the morning. I sigh with irritation. Today was so exhausting and yet I am wide awake. I stare at the ceiling until I begin to see shapes in the darkness.

After a time, I begin to feel like I am not alone in my wakefulness. I turn my head to Finny’s bed and he’s looking over at me. I blink. He rolls over on his side. One of his fingers brushes over his lips. I swallow. Hard.

“Are you thinking about your test?” He asks me softly.

“No,” I reply.

He looks past me and out of the window. “Oh.”

I yawn and try to quieten my mind. I try not to think about how Finny is awake and how he’s only a few feet away from me. About his eyes on the beach and certainly not about him wearing nothing but underpants. And what if I thought about what was under them? What if I started thinking -

“Hey, Gene.”

I bunch the covers around my middle. I try to be subtle, knowing it isn’t possible. “Hm?”

“Want to go swimming?”

I turn to see Finny grinning widely, beginning to sit up.

“Swimming? Now?”

“Sure.” He reaches for his shoes. “Why not?”

“It’s dangerous,” I say. “Swimming in the river at night.”

“We’ll decide what’s dangerous or not.” He smiles down at me. “Come on. We’ll just go for a little while. An hour. We’ll be back before anyone misses us.”

I sit up awkwardly, trying to cover myself with blankets and my arms. “Okay. Can you give me, um…can you give a minute?”

If he knew what was going on, the sparkle in his eyes and the smile he wears does not show it. “I’ll meet you out in the hall.” He opens the door and quietly shuts it behind him.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to get caught with my hand down my pants and I cannot go out there like this. So, I close my eyes and I try to think about something awful. Something disturbing. Finny hurt. Finny drowning. Finny falling out of a tree. Finny in pain.

My eyes fly open, and I feel a strange sense of Déjà vu or something similar and I am overwhelmed with guilt and with remorse and for what I do not know. I sit with this feeling for a long time. For too long as I hear Finny’s gentle knock on the door, “Gene?”

“I’m coming,” I whisper sharply.

I put on my shoes and open the door. Finny is standing there all smiles, all ready for our middle-of-the-night swim in the river. He turns to go down the hall, but I grab his arm, stopping him.

He looks at me with surprise.

“I feel like I need to tell you…,” I begin and don’t know where I’ll end.

His brows furrow with concern.

“I feel like I need to tell you that I’m sorry.”

He tilts his head. “For what?”

“I don’t know.”

He studies me for a second then flashes me a sincere grin. “You dream too much.”

I follow him out to the river, and think that he’s right.

I do.

* * *

The river is colder at night.

I wade in slowly and tread water just below the tall tree with the long branches. Finny floats on his back and talks to me about all the stars he sees. My eyes adjust to the nearly full moonlight, and I hear the sound of frogs and crickets nearby. Finny chatters and I listen and I wonder if he ever tires of himself. If he ever tires of his endless monologues and observations. I believe that if my mind went at the same speed as his I would never sleep again. It would drive me crazy.

And then Finny is challenging me to swim with him from one rock to another, one tree to another, and I join him. Because what else will I do? Who else would I want to be out here with besides him? And as I move through the water, moonlight on my back, a cool summer breeze through my hair, I am fascinated with this boy beside me. And I wonder, and I hope, he is fascinated with me, too. I think I can ask him. I think I can actually ask him this, in this private moment, in the middle of the night, because we’re alone. No one knows we are here.

But I want to catch my breath first.

I lay there under the tree, my lungs filling and emptying, gazing up through the branches and it all seems smaller at night. Somehow. The starlight plays tricks. I am thinking about this when I feel drips of water upon my chest and Finny is over top of me, one arm on either side of me, his chest rising and falling. Inhaling and exhaling and this time I do not push him away. This time, I lay very still. This time, I let him.

It’s just as he says: I dream too much.

He looks down at me sprawled underneath him, studying, emerald eyes roaming. He places a hand on my chest, and I cannot move. I am still out of breath, and I am caught in his gaze.

“I can feel your heart,” he whispers. River water drips down his nose and onto my chin. “It feels like this.” He taps out the rhythm with two fingers - a ta-tap, ta-tap, ta-tap.

His eyes are filled with something. I have never seen him look that way before. More solemn than he was on the beach, more curious, more…hungry.

He takes one of my hands places it on his chest. “Can you feel mine?”

Indeed, a thud, thud, thud hammers from his breastbone and his skin, slick with water and sweat, warm under my hand, distracts me. My fingers tap out the beats of his heart just like he did to me. “It feels the same.” I didn’t mean to say it out loud.

“The same?” He repeats softly.

I nod.

His hand runs along my neck and up to my face, his thumb upon my cheek. Something inside me stirs. I clumsily run my hand up and down his arm, to his shoulder where I pause. Where I squeeze.

He inhales sharply and leans over me and I close my eyes. I don’t know what he’s doing. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know what I want to happen. He leans his head against mine, his breath warm in my hair. I run my hands along his back, and I don’t want to stop touching him. My hands feel like magnets. Stuck.

Then I see, at the base of his neck, a pulse. A tiny throb. Like the heartbeat of a baby bird, it throbs so delicately, so open there under his skin. That’s where I rest my lips, where I breath him in, all salty water, damp earth, nighttime, and sweat. I feel him shudder in my arms, I feel him tense and relax, and his lips find mine. At first, it feels like a feather, the wing of a butterfly. I feel him hesitate and then my hands are around his neck, pulling him down, and his lips crash into mine and it feels as if an electric jolt runs down my spine.

I don’t know what I’m doing. I follow his lead. I am allowing. I am receiving. I receive his tongue into my mouth, his breath, and I am holding him tighter. Something is happening. Inside me, outside of me. I don’t know what I’m doing.

His kisses me softly, deeply, exploring, and I do the same and hope I don’t do it wrong. Before he breaks the kiss completely, he nips at my bottom lip and I shiver, involuntary. He looks down at me, he blinks, his gaze intense, penetrating mine. He kisses my neck, my chest, and I know I am aroused. He would have to know, too. He would have to feel it. Because I can feel him. He rubs his erection up against my thigh and gasps. I catch the skin underneath his ear in my teeth. He gasps again, kisses me again, and our tongues collide in my mouth, in his, somewhere in the middle. I am dizzy, and he is hard against me and I’m hard against him. He rolls his hips against mine and I make a sound, a moan, it just comes out of me.

His hand moves down my body and I begin to shake like I’m cold but I’m not. I’m warm, I’m feeling all my blood vessels dilate, I am feeling his hand, his fingers slip under the waistband…under…down…

I dig my fingers into his back. My eyes fling open and I suddenly remember where we are. I suddenly remember where we are, who we are, and what we are doing.

“Don’t!” I reach down and grab his hand, alarm in my voice. I surprise him. I surprise myself.

He looks at me, his eyes wide. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t - I don’t know if I want that. I don’t know if I want you to do that.”

He slowly removes his hand from the waistband and I see his cheeks redden. “I’m sorry.”

I prop myself up on my elbows. I am still shaking. I feel as if I am coming out of a trance. “You don’t need to be sorry. I just -” I search for something to give him, something to soothe him, and soothe myself, but my mind has gone blank. I am thoughtless.

Finny lays on his side, his legs tangled up with mine and my heart skips a beat. “I’m sorry, Gene.”

I look at him and my heart swells. Like this, in the moonlight just like this, I have never seen him look so handsome. So beautiful. And I don’t want him to look at me with such a pained expression. I don’t want him to feel guilty or sorry. But I don’t know. I tell him that, I don’t know what to do, what I am doing, what any of this means. And the bubble we were in as we kissed and touched each other suddenly pops and we’re outside, out in the open, by the river, where anyone can see, anyone can walk by.

I reach for my clothes. “We should go back.”

He watches me for a moment, then touches my arm, turning me to him. He searches my eyes. “I don’t want this to be the only time.”

I search his eyes in return, emeralds with specks of aquamarine, and I lean over to kiss him once more. Small, sweet, his lashes flutter on my skin. I pull away. “It won’t be.”

He’s pleased at this. He smiles.

We get dressed and walk back to the dorm, to our room, and he is beside me all the way. He is beside me, where I always want him to stay.


	2. Chapter 2

When I wake the next morning, Finny is laying beside me. I let him into my bed last night, let him slide under the covers, let him kiss me, let him hold me, and I let myself do the same to him. That was all there was. I ran my fingers through his hair as he told me how he cares for me. And what did I say? It’s like a spell, these summer nights, these summer sessions, these days here at Devon where rules have relaxed and perhaps I have relaxed with them.

So, he’s beside me and for a time I am content. He sleeps with his head on my shoulder, and I idly wonder what he dreams about. I kiss his eyelids - first one and then the other - and notice he doesn’t sleep as he is when he is awake. I smile. He’s still when he’s asleep. Perfectly still, weighted down, one arm around me, his face so peaceful. And last night, by the river, him asking me if I can feel his heart beating, and kissing me, seems otherworldly. We must have dreamed it, I think. We must have lay here, fallen asleep and dreamed it all up together. I rest my head against his and I begin to whisper to him how I care for him, but there’s a noise outside our door.

Voices. Feet. Morning traffic up and down the hall, to and from the showers, and to and from rooms, and my heart nearly seizes in my chest. I get out of bed and start getting dressed. I gather up our clothes, flung on the floor, and I gather up my books.

“Finny.” I gently shake him.

He makes a soft sound in the back of his throat, turns, arm outstretched, and I believe he’s feeling for me. I turn to make sure our door is locked, and I reach for his hand. “Finny. Get up.”

His eyes open, lazily, a smile at seeing my face, and his hand is on my cheek, stroking, and I place my hand over his, stroking. He looks near perfect upon waking, and for a minute it makes me feel inferior. I have yet to glance in a mirror, but I know my hair has been tousled by his fingers. I know I must smell of the river, bedsheets, and his kisses. I know that I do not look like him, and still he smiles at me, pulls my face closer to his, and brushes his lips against mine.

The temptation is great. To climb back into bed with him - _to hell with class, to hell with books, to hell with it all!_ \- if we could stay locked in here all day, all night. And I think, wildly, I wouldn’t need to eat nor sleep nor drink ever again if he was with me. Something is happening. Inside of me, outside of me - and still…there’s a nag, a pull, incessant. It is as if my father or a teacher has caught me, pinched me by my ear, pulling me from stupidity, pulling me into sensibility.

I reluctantly break our kiss. “I’m going to go to class,” I tell him. “You need to get into your bed.”

He sits up on his elbow. “Why?”

“Because I’m going to open the door. Someone might see.”

He looks at me strangely. “Who will see?”

“I don’t know. Leper. Chet. Anyone can walk by.”

He forces out a laugh. “But it doesn’t matter. They wouldn’t know this is where you sleep.”

“But they might,” I insist. I kiss him once more, quickly, and beg him to get into his own bed.

He slowly complies, and I open the door like there might be an audience of curious boys, wondering why Gene and Finny have not yet emerged. Curious and accusing boys, craning their necks, looking for something that is none of their concern.

But there’s no one there.

I leave the dormitory and make my way to my trigonometry class. As this normal walk ensues, as I take this walk I have taken for the whole summer now, at a pace which is familiar to me, the day settles in, the sun bright and illuminating, I begin to feel - in every sense of the word - exposed.

I look around me, the daylight shining, and I think of last night. It all seemed right, and I let him do as he wanted. Almost. My cheeks burn hot, inflamed, as I think about him reaching down, reaching down to touch me…it all seemed so right because we were alone. Because it was dark and the darkness can hide things. But now, now here in the sun, with singing birds and nearly late to class, I don’t feel as safe. I feel as if -

“Hey! Gene!”

I whip my head around to see Leper catching up to me. I wait for him, feeling my heart rate tick like a time bomb.

He says hello. I say hello. We chat for a while about nothing I care even slightest bit about, and then he tilts his head at me curiously. “Have you heard anything about another meeting?”

“A meeting?”

“The Super Suicide Society. I was thinking about jumping. You know, from the tree.”

“Oh.” I’d forgotten about it. All about it. And to think - Finny and I were out there just last night, laying under that tree, nearly naked. Laying out there like lovers…

Leper continues with his talking, and I’m not listening. He yaps on and on, and I’m not listening. Can he see it? Can Leper see it all over my face, because it must be there. It must be all over me. Is that why he asks? Was he there? Walking along in nature, so peaceful, when he came upon us, wrapped in each others arms. My hand on Finny’s chest, and his hand on mine, and our hearts just beating.

I step away from him. I make an excuse. I mumble stupid words.

“Where’s Finny?” Leper calls, as I turn to leave him.

“What?” My heart is pounding, and I feel as if he’s talking too loud. It is as if his voice is echoing all over and everyone can hear. Everyone will know.

“Is he still in bed?”

“What?!”

“What?” Leper looks at me as if there are worms crawling out of my ears. “I said, is Finny still in bed? It’s the middle of the day. Christ, Gene.” His eyes narrow, he looks closer at me. “Are you okay? Your face is as red as a tomato.”

“I’ll see you later!” I turn and briskly walk away from him, far away, leaving him behind, baffled and alone.

* * *

I suppose, as the day wears on, that my panic was for naught.

Things return to normal. Finny gathers us all into a game of blitzball and it’s like it always was. Everyone is like they’ve always been, including Finny. I feel mild relief, I feel mild disappointment, and what was I thinking? That he would kiss me in front of everyone? Just throw me down on the ground and hold me as he did last night? I must be crazy, and as the afternoon turns to evening and we run off to shower for dinner, I begin to think that none of it ever happened. It was a dream I had, a vision, like the one a few days ago. I made it real in my own mind, and I dreamed it all, and I woke up when Leper opened his mouth.

That night, I am by my bed getting ready to lay down. I hear Finny come inside behind me, closing the door, and locking it. I plump my pillow when I feel his arms around me, his lips on my neck.

I drop the pillow and close my eyes.

“That was excruciating today, wasn’t it?” He kisses my neck here and there. His arms tighten around me.

How he can do this…how he can make me remember none of it was a dream and this is real, and this is now, and this is him, and this is me. Here. Alone. I lean back against him and let him kiss me. I let him remove my shirt. I let him turn me around to face him. His smile is expectant, like I might have something to announce. I realize that I do.

“We need to be careful.” I make sure to keep my voice a whisper.

“I’ve locked the door.” He gestures to it.

“Only in here then. With the door locked. Not outside anymore. Someone could have seen us.”

“You have so many rules.” He kisses my forehead. The tip of my nose. He comes for my lips, and it’s difficult for me to turn away from him.

“We need rules. If someone were to see us…”

“I understand, I understand. But out by the river? Can’t we sometimes? When there’s no one else out there? And it doesn’t have to be for long. It doesn’t always have to be like last night.”

I feel a pang of disappointment. “Don’t you want it to be?”

“Always I want it to be,” he reassures, his eyes locked on mine. “But just quick sometimes. During the day? Just to be alone. Together.”

I think about Leper and his baffled face. I feel silly, stupid. He could not have seen a thing. We would have heard him, we would have heard anyone that close by. “I guess we can,” I say.

“I guess we will,” he says.

And we are in my bed once again, laying with arms around each other, and his eyes don’t leave mine, and I think if I look long enough I can see the deepest parts of the sea. I think I can see the highest points in the sky, above the clouds. I think I can see stars. And where did this begin? It seems so fast, so swiftly we are like this now, that it seems it has always been this way, simmering under the surface. Hiding, waiting for us to find it.

“At the beach,” I say. “Were you really only seeing if I was awake?”

I have never seen him look speechless nor bashful, but my words make him so. His cheeks flush pink, and I am quite pleased with myself.

“More or less,” he says finally. “Did I really scare you?”

“No,” I admit.

And I want to know, I want to know so badly, when did he begin to want me in this way? Has he always, and I was too shrouded with envy to see it? I could ask myself these very same questions, but it is him I want to know about. It is a moment of selfishness, intense curiosity, and I am not sure how to ask him, how to say the words.

He curls his fingers into my hair, his body stretched out beside me, long and lean, and I cannot keep my hands to myself. I kiss him deeply, the tip of his tongue flicking over mine, so subtle, so soft, that it makes me shiver. I kiss his chin, down his neck, over his Adam’s apple, and pull at his skin with my teeth, just as subtle, just as soft, that it makes him shiver, too.

He stops me from kissing further, tilts my head up to his, his eyes are full of longing. “Do you care for me, Gene? Do you care for me the way I care for you?”

I tangle my arms and legs up with his, gaze into his eyes. “Yes. I do. I care for you very much.”

Relief flickers over this features and he looks just as joyful as he did on the beach. “I’m happy. I’m so happy with you. I’ve never cared for anyone as much as I’ve cared for you.”

I am overjoyed at the sound of this words. So much that I think I may burst from the inside out. Our lips meet in the small space between us, and it feels so much like a promise, like a vow that I take in the quiet of the night, the darkness that covers us up, and I whisper his name, and he whispers mine, and we are together in it, basking and complete.

* * *

And so it becomes a secret, a routine, moments in a day that I never want to end.

I will find a note on my pillow. I will leave a note on his. And at certain points during the day we find ourselves by the tree, by the river. I wait for him or he waits for me. When I see him come around, I cannot keep myself from kissing the life out of him, and no matter how hard we try, there is always tree bark on one of us, grass in his hair, little twigs in mine, and we merely say we fell down the hill, and we laugh about it, two boys roughhousing is all it was, and Finny turns it into a grand story, vivid with suspense. He charms and it’s his gift, and I say nothing because it’s his. It isn’t mine. The story isn’t a complete lie. Sometimes we do fall, one on top of the other, so overcome, so lost, and knowing we only have a few minutes of this before one of us needs to be somewhere, be seen, be present.

The secret society falls into a distant memory; the blitzball sits in the grass like a useless lump; the breezes become cooler in the shade of that tree. And sometimes when he has me pressed to its trunk, his hungry mouth on mine, on my neck, I look up at the branch, the long branch over the river and see it jostle in the breeze, and the strangest feeling bubbles up inside me. A cold remorse, an empty guilt, and I feel it so strongly at times that I have to hold him closer to me as if he might sink into this ground, sink into the mud, and be swallowed up.

But he’s there, always there, and our quick kisses by the tree only builds the anticipation for when we are alone at night. Something is happening, I feel it, inside of me and outside of me. And thus far, I would conclude our interactions to be largely innocent. We are partly clothed, and I have not allowed him to touch me yet. Because then it becomes something else, and my mind will flood with images of suspicious eyes I might or might not have seen during the day; simple phrases and questions that I twist into accusations, and I become unsure of myself, I become afraid of what this will be if we cross that line. A line I have drawn so firmly, and he has so firmly respected.

But I want him to cross it. I want him unbuckle, unbutton, unzip me, and to take him into my hands, please him, release him. And what will it be then? I am on a boundary, inching closer and closer to its crossing, and so when we leave our room one night, sneak away - and I think we are going to the river again - he surprises me by taking me into the pool house.

“Finny,” I hiss. “Why are we here? It’s locked.”

He smiles and reveals a “borrowed” key, opens the door, and the echo is so loud it makes me jump.

“They’re draining it next week,” he says. “To clean it.”

August is coming and after it autumn will sneak in and in the interim is our month-long vacation. I do not want to think about it. I do not want to consider a whole month without him.

I watch him remove his shirt, his pants, and make his way to the steps. “Are you going to try to break your own record?”

There’s just enough moonlight to see the still surface breaking as he steps down into the pool. “I only wanted a midnight swim.” He turns to me. “With you, of course.”

As I remove my clothes, I look around nervously. It would be impossible for anyone to see us, but I create possibilities. That is, perhaps, my gift.

“It’s alright, Gene.” He watches me step into the water. “It’s just you and me.”

It is cold at first, but my body quickly adjusts. We swim around, lazily, hands grazing each other under the surface, stealing a kiss, and we meet in the middle, on our knees in just three feet of water, his hands on my hips, his head against mine, and the most peaceful feeling I have ever had.

Moonlight, water, and shadows, it’s ethereal. We live inside a bubble. He kisses me so softly, his mouth open against mine, our breaths mingling, and I feel a sense of urgency. A sense of crossing, one step and then the other. Slowly, I remove my shorts and it isn’t easy for some reason. I am clumsy about it, and I toss them, sopping wet on the side. He watches me and he quickly does the same, and he’s more smooth about it than I am, and I know I can never achieve his grace.

We are naked, completely naked, up against each other for the first time, and I am aching. A feeling, so tender, blooms inside me like a flower, and his eyes so green, so intently gazing into mine, makes me feel as if I am falling.

He presses his forehead against mine, his lips just a hairs-breadth from my own, a trickle of water drips from his chin to the pool. “I love you. So much.”

He speaks in a whisper, but it echos and I feel it all through me, inside and out. I grab his shoulder. I squeeze. “And I love you. So much.”

And what could only follow but a kiss, messy and mashing, it steals my breath. We move to the side like one, and I press him up against the wall, and he repeats his words. I repeat my words, and they get swallowed up by our mouths, hungry, pressing, crushing, breathless. And it’s true. I believe it, so it is true. We have said it, so it is the absolute truth.

We get out of the water in a daze, I look for a towel, I toss him one, and I realize I am seeing him and he is seeing me. He is sprung up, aroused, and I am the same. It is quiet, it is dark, there is no one here.

I go to him, every inch of me is pressed up against every inch of him, and it’s not close enough. Still, it’s not enough, and I am balancing on an edge, and he just on the other side. I kiss his shoulder, a muscle twitch under my lips, and up, up, up to his neck his face. And all these edges, they just fade away, they just dissolve, and edges are sharp, but I am sharper.

And so I take his hand, inch by inch, I take it down, down, down and his eyes grow wide, the pupils dilate black with lust. I place his hand around me, and his fingers and palm take hold of me, and he is stroking me in such a way, such a way that is so new, that my legs nearly give out. But his other arm comes around me, holds me up - _I’ve got you, Gene, I’ve got you_ \- and the water was so cold and his hand is so warm, I groan at this touch.

“Would it be better if we were lying down?” He says, kissing my neck.

I cannot even speak, so I nod and we lay on a mat by the pool, him on top of me, his strokes intensify, and every muscle in my body has clenched, winding up like a toy. His hand moves up and down, around and around, squeezing intermittently, and I suck my breath in through my clenched teeth, and I speak his name, but all I can manage is “Fin….”

His cheek is against mine, his breath panting in my ear. The prickle of sweat has just begun to form on my chest when he says, “Come. Come in my hand.”

I nearly do, and even though I am nearly blinded by the pleasure he is giving me, I salvage up enough sense to know I should do this for him, too.

“Wait. Wait,” I say. I reach down and grasp him and he’s as hard as a rock, throbbing, and he groans so loud it echos every where. He presses his lips to mine, his eyes squeezed shut, and he groans again, against my mouth, and I feel it in my lungs. I stroke him in the only way I know, as I have done so to pleasure myself. But I try to match what he is doing to me and it makes him tremble on top of me and neither of us can stand it anymore.

And it’s like a cup, wavering on an edge, finally tipping over, spilling, splashing, gushing. I shudder into his hand, and it feels - it feels - oh, God, it feels….!

A sound escapes me, and his hips jut into mine as he comes on my stomach, sticky and warm, it reaches my chest. He collapses on top of me like a tree trunk. My heart feels like a jackhammer.

He buries his face in my neck, gasping. “Oh. Gene. Oh, God. Gene.”

I am sprawled there like a starfish, my limbs feel like rubber, and I gaze up at the skylights. I smile up at them as his breath begins to slow, my heart calms itself, and I know then that this has become something different. We will never be the same after this. And what was I so afraid of? Why do I worry so much? And I turn to him, he turns to me. There is a smile on his lips as well. And we are different now. Everything is different.

He runs a towel over me, and I do the same to him. With care, there is no rush, there is no where else I want to be. We curl up on our sides, facing one another, I face him and he faces me, and there are his emerald eyes and there is his smile and there are his arms around me, so close he pulls me to him, and he says, “I love you. I do. More than anything.”

And I say, “And I love you. Finny. More than anything.”

And what is anything? Anything is outside of now, outside of here, outside of us, in this time and in this place. This bubble, and oh, these summer nights, they cast such a spell. And, oh, this darkness it just covers us up, and I love him and I believe it because it’s true.


	3. Chapter 3

There is a serenade of frogs and crickets.

The river is like their auditorium and they must sing their song every night. But on this night, I am only vaguely aware. I hear nothing. I see nothing. I am in love.

I have a secret.

I have _you_.

Oh, Gene, Gene, Gene…if only you knew how much I’ve wanted you. Since I first laid eyes on you. Since you first spoke to me. Since I saw your head bent over a book, your face so stern, your hair the color of willow bark falling into your eyes. I wanted you then. I wanted you all through the nights I heard your sleepy sighs and the way you must turn down your bed - _just so_ \- before you’ll even think of getting in it.

When I first heard your voice, I knew. When your eyes first met mine, I knew. Your eyes are the color of clouds just before a storm breaks. A soft gray, a fluffy gray, and each time I look in them I see the storm. The thunder rolls and the rain patters and the lighting flashes and it fills me up.

It. Fills. Me. Up.

And it was your eyes, Gene, your eyes that first enveloped me. You looked at me and, I swear, it was like you shot a bolt of lightening from them into mine, into my heart, into my soul, and I was your captive. I was already yours, long before now, long before this night.

We are at the river. You lay on your back, I lay on my back, my head on your chest as we look up through the branches at the night sky. There are more clouds than stars. More silence than speaking. More contentment than at any time in my whole life.

And I think of when I jumped from the branch and you hesitated. You were scared, and I knew it. I did. I wanted you to jump. I wanted you to take a chance. To trust me, to jump from everything you have ever known, down to me, down to us, and you did. Each time I took a jump, you were there behind me, and it warmed me. Couldn’t you see? Even then, how much I loved you? I didn’t believe that the day would come (but I did dream about it, Gene, all the time) when you would love me back. Your eyes were like polished silver when they looked into mine and you said it - you said you loved me, too.

Is it wrong to feel this complete?

“Will you be happy to see your folks?” You ask me now.

“I guess so,” I reply. “Will you be happy to see yours?”

You seem to give that some thought. “I will be because I have to be.”

I laugh. “What does that mean?”

“I must be happy to see them because they’re my parents. But I won’t be completely happy, because it means you’ll be with yours and it’s so far away.”

I reach for your hand and you give it to me. “I can write you. If you want.”

“I’d love it.” You kiss my hand and that kiss just warms me through and through. A whole month. I’ve wracked my brain for a way to see you during that time, but it’s so far away.

September. It’s too far off. Why does time only slow when you have no use for it?

You shift underneath me, and I turn my face to yours. You bring a finger to my lips, tracing mine.

“A whole month,” you say sullenly.

“Thirty days,” I suggest, semi-brightly, but I am just as sullen as you. And I can barely stand to tear myself away from you now. I only think of you when I am not with you. I only think of you all day long, all night long, you’re there when I wake, you’re there when I sleep, how will I stand it?

Then you shift underneath me, you move us so I am underneath you. Your kiss takes my breath away. I feel it under my skin, in my very depths. Our tongues slip together, playful, passionate, and your breath is quickening. You rub yourself up against me, and what else can I do but moan from the pleasure. You rub again, grinding, and I do the same to you. Before long, sweat forms on our skin and it’s just you and me, lost together, lost in this, lost in each other. Right before, you open your eyes and look into mine. It melts me; my insides puddle into oblivion, and then we come together, releasing, shuddering, and my mind goes completely blank.

I lay behind you in the tall grasses, kissing your neck, your shoulders, and down your spine, and I revel in the sounds of contentment and pleasure you make. The way I make you feel. The way you make me feel. The exchange. The give and the take. Oh, Gene. You have my heart. So completely do you have it. So in love I am with you.

We are sleepy after our tryst, so we get up to go back to our room. Your eyes catch mine.

Stormy eyes, and I’m swept away.

Drenched.

* * *

I wait for you by the tree.

It’s our last day to be together. Tomorrow morning you will take a train down South. I have already began composing a letter to you. Isn’t that silly? Of course, you don’t know. I have done it in secret. I will mail it as soon as I arrive home, so we don’t need to go for too long without having a small part of each other to ourselves. I smile to myself as I think of your face when you see it, when you read it. Will you blush? Because sometimes you do, and it’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen. I love to see you turn red with shyness, with desire. It’s a flush that shows a light pink on your cheeks and a rosy red on your neck and ears. It’s there when I whisper my love for you. It’s there when we catch each other’s gaze across a room. It’s there when I make you come.

My body is itching with desire for you right now. I cannot wait to see you! And then I hear your soft step on the grass and you come around the tree in the way that you do - your West Point stride - because you are really quite fascinating to me, Gene Forrester. The way you walk, speak, your mannerisms. Perhaps I should tell you this: I have always been a little envious of you. The discipline you have; the thought you put into each thing that you do. You don’t just study books. You study life. You studied the limb that day, carefully weighing it’s strength, the height from the water. You studied me. I saw. I noticed. You are careful about what you do; you put great thought into everything, which flatters me immensely. This is not a boyish impulse.

It’s real.

It’s true.

It’s love.

You smile at me when you see me (a special smile, only reserved for me!) and your arms are around me, you are back against the tree and I peer into those silvery eyes before I kiss your soft lips. The world dissolves and nothing exists except you and me. Always, you and me. I never, ever want to be without you and the thought that I will for a whole damn month is painful. My kiss becomes needy; I just want to be immersed in this moment for all time. Forever and ever. Just you and me, Gene. Always, you and me.

But then you take your lips from mine. “We can’t stay long,” you say. “Everyone is out and about. Packing up. Getting ready to leave for home.”

This pains me, but you’re right. Pragmatic Gene. _My_ pragmatic Gene.

You kiss me again and a heat begins to seep into my blood, circling through each vessel until I am filled with it. I am thinking of last night, the way you looked into my eyes, as if you wanted to _see_ me and wanted me to _see_ you. It seems that I am passing this heat through my body into yours, because you only hold me this tightly when we are locked in our room alone. You guide one of my hands to your crotch, prompting me to touch you, to rub against you, and I willingly do so.

You’re so aroused. Aroused for me! And I see the pinky flush of your cheeks, your neck beginning to redden with lust, and you whisper in my ear: “Finny. Please, Finny.”

Your wish is my command.

I unbuckle your belt, unzip your pants, and slip my hand inside to feel you, the throbbing hardness of you, and feel you grow harder still as I deftly palm you. I nibble at your bottom lip and you moan as softly as you can manage. You stiffen and bury your hot breath in my neck…when I hear a sound.

A step upon the grass.

The _swish, swish, swish_ of loafers, the leisurely stroll of someone out for some fresh air.

You hear it, too. You tear your face away from me and push me away from you. I don’t have time to react. I see none other than Leper and his eternally baffled face, casually making his way towards the river - and towards us. Leper’s eyes find me standing there just as mine find his. You are scrambling to zip up and buckle up, your face full of panic, and I know that I must do something.

When Leper is within spitting distance, I give him a bright smile and a wave. He waves back and his eyes alight on you. You have knelt down behind the tree, pretending to tie your shoe, because you are are still fully erect (because of me!) and you are trying to hide it.

I begin talking to Leper about anything that comes into my brain. He listens - good-natured Leper, if sometimes a bit odd - and I see his eyes shift from me to you. You to me. I think I see (and I really didn’t, it was imagined) a flicker of something dark over his features. A frown. A hardness in his eyes. But then I blink and it’s gone.

I say to Leper that the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session will have to be rechristened something else for the autumn term. But we _will_ continue. And he says, can’t there be something else for initiating? The tree jump is so stupid. He continues with his list of complaints, and I’m nodding my head as he talks, but I am not listening. Part if me is hyper-aware of you behind me. I glance at you and see you leaning against the tree, pretending to listen to us, nodding vigorously, but there are beads of sweat on your brow. Your face has gone sickly pale.

I quickly convey to Leper that you and I were just discussing what that new initiation might be. We thought a midnight swim, when the river turns cold and becomes choked with fallen leaves, would be just the thing. Leper shrugs, rolls his eyes, and looks over at you again. The look on your face, Gene - the absolute fear in your eyes - I want so much to come over and reassure you. To take that look away and never see it again.

Leper looks thoughtful for a moment, then he tells us he must continue packing his things, and he briskly walks along the riverbank until he is out of sight.

I go to you, desperate to speak to you. I take your hand, but you pull it away.

“He saw us,” you say.

“No. He didn’t see anything.”

“He did,” you insist. “He saw us, Finny. Didn’t you see how he was looking at me?”

“We surprised him. That’s all. I don’t think he was expecting anyone to be out here.”

“And why was _he_ out here? I think he was looking for me. Or you. Or both of us.”

I blink. “He was just walking around. As he always does. Please don’t be alarmed, Gene. He saw nothing.”

You are not convinced, and you are moving away from me. Stepping away. Your eyes look as if the clouds are about to rip apart and downpour on us all. “He saw us, and he’ll tell everyone!”

“No, that’s not true! He didn’t see a thing! Not a thing!”

You’re stepping away, backing away.

“Gene.” I reach for you, but you don’t reach back. Instead, you turn from me and you begin to walk away. “Gene!” Your walk turns into a jog. “Gene!”

And now you are running. Running away from me. You leave me by the river, by the tree, alone. Caught in a downpour.

* * *

You pace the floor between our beds.

I watch you and I tell you there is no reason to be alarmed. I assure you. Over and over again, I do this. But the way you stare at me, with distrust and with pain, it hurts me. I never want to see you look like this again. I never want to see you look upon me that way ever, ever again.

Then you stop your pacing, and you stare hard at me, and I know what’s coming. Thoughtful Gene. My thoughtful, pragmatic Gene, you have thought about this all night, I know. Because you don’t do a thing without thinking about it first. You are not impulsive. You are not one to do things halfway.

You are saying to me now how this must end. How this was a mistake. How we have been seen, and even if Leper keeps his mouth shut, he will still know. And one person is one too many. The words seem to drip from you like a faulty faucet, leaky and drooping, but your face is resolute.

I am trembling. It seems as if our room has turned upside down. Our beds are on the ceiling. The desk. Chairs. And I sit upside down, all the blood rushing to my head until it feels as if it might pop.

“No, Gene,” I say. “You’re being ridiculous. Leper saw nothing! Nothing at all!”

“We’ve been too careless,” you continue and I see a film form over your eyes. “I don’t think we can do this anymore. It’s too risky.” Eyes like polished silver, shimmering, wet. “I think we should end this now. The break will give us some time apart. And we can just be…roommates and friends. Like before.”

Like before?

_Like before?!_

Before when I loved you, you mean, and before when I believe (and I believe it with every fiber of my being!) you loved me, too. Before when I wanted nothing more than to spend time with you, to steal your attention, steal moments with you, and then that night by the river I felt your heart and you felt mine and we were beating hearts, breathless, and beginning at last. Oh, Gene! Gene, don’t you understand? You must understand!

I go to you and try to take you in my arms, but you shrink away from me. Your face is pained and tears begin to stream down your cheeks. You see there, Gene? You see? You would not be crying if you knew this was right. It isn’t right! All your thinking has led you astray!

You’re grabbing your bags.

I stand in front of the door and plead with you, but I know as I speak that it’s no use. You wipe the tears away, you set your jaw, you ask me to please move. Please Finny, you say, please let me go.

No, Gene! No, I will _not_ let you go! You cannot be serious. Can’t you remember all those nights together? Yesterday afternoon when we were so caught up, the heat of our love, flowing between us - Gene! How can you change your mind so quickly? After all we have shared, all we have said?

But you look at me - the flatness of finality in your silvery eyes - and you say: “It’s wrong, Finny. What we’ve been doing is wrong.”

And your words go through me - _oh, dear God, Gene_ \- they go through me like a spear. A spear on a lightening bolt, into my heart, my soul, and I am weakened.

I take your bags from your hands. I press myself up against you. I cup your face in my hands. I penetrate those stormy eyes with my gaze. “Wrong?” I whisper. “How can _this_ be wrong?”

I see a twitch of your lip, a quiver. The tears return.

“Don’t you feel it?” I say. “Can’t you feel -” and I take your hand and put it upon my heart and I place my hand upon your heart “ - _this_?”

Beating, beating, beating. Heartbeats like drums, like the soft flutter of new life in the womb, in time to one another, a rhythm of life. A rhythm of love.

You hold my gaze for a few seconds. You feel it. I know you do, Gene. _I know it_.

Then I see your face change, the tears dry up, the quiver steadied. And you pick up your bags. You tell me goodbye. Goodbye, Finny.

And I say nothing. I stand as still as a statue, hearing the door close, your step in the empty halls, going, going, and you are gone.


	4. Chapter 4

My mother sits back on her knees and wipes her forehead.

She asks me to pass her the trowel, and even though I hear her, her words clear as the sky is right now, it is as if she’s spoken through a tunnel. The part of my brain that takes words and turns them into action has frozen. So, I just sit there in the grass, the green, green grass, mesmerized by the startling color, and the southern humidity clings to my skin and sweat is getting into my eyes and -

“Gene?”

She shields her eyes from the sun, and I numbly hand her the trowel, wiping sweat from my face. The heat is oppressive, and before she can suggest I go do something with my father, I excuse myself and go inside. I take a Coke from the icebox and rub it all over my heated face before taking a long, fizzy drink.

I wonder if I am in Hell.

I have only been home a week, but I feel as if I have died and been born again a hundred times. I sit with my parents in the mornings at breakfast. My father asks me different variations of the same questions - _Did you sleep okay, Gene? Are you looking forward to the fall term? Are you planning to enlist before graduation?_ And I give him different variations of the same answers - _Yes, I slept well. I’m looking forward to my studies. I’m sure I’ll be drafted when I turn eighteen, father._ And my mother sits down, sees there’s no orange juice on the table, so she gets back up. Then she sits down again and sees the maple syrup is missing, then she gets back up. Then my father mumbles through some comment about President Roosevelt while my mother nods and keeps an eye on the oven. Then my mother sees there’s no salt, so she gets back up. Then my father goes to work, and my mother presents me with a list of chores I can “help” with.

So, I clean out the gutters. I mow the lawn. I fix a weak spot in the fence. And at noon, she calls me in for lunch and she tells me there is a new girl in the neighborhood - just a few houses down - and she looks to be about my age. And in the evenings we listen to the radio and I sit like a stone in the wing-backed chair that’s been in the same spot since I was born. I sit and I sit, until I feel myself sinking into it. Until I feel myself becoming cloth and stuffing; legs made of wood. The union of flesh and cushions. And I fear my heart may stop beating all together and I’ll need Finny to tap out the rhythm so my heart knows what to do, because without him, I don’t know what to do.

When the telephone rings, I wait with bated breath when my mother answers. I will come running in from outside, and I will wait until I hear the pitch of her voice change and know it is someone familiar. It is someone she knows, a friend, and they’ll begin talking, and I return to whatever it was that I was doing. And I don’t always remember what I was doing so I will wander around like a ghost until I find something else to do. Then there is a string of things left unfinished because my mother’s dear boy, Gene, has lost his sense of responsibility away at school.

I chase after sleep at night and once I have caught it, it has me in its grips and will not let me go in the morning. I lay heavy and sweating, when the clang of a lid on a pot pulls me to the edge of consciousness, and it’s so hot here. I’d forgotten how steamy and overbearing it is in August. My mother’s hair curls around her face from the heat in the kitchen as she lays out jars on a cloth, canning vegetables from our “Victory Garden” and winks at me and says we must all do our part. For a minute, and only a minute, I am in reality. I am in what is happening now, like dipping my face into a pool of water. But then I pull it out, and I sink and slip and fall and I am no longer here.

I am back at Devon and Finny is in my bed. He is beside me, up against me, he has his arms around me, and I can feel his every inhale and exhale against my skin. I push my fingers into his hair and he pushes his lips against mine, and it’s there - right there - that I stop. I rip it out of my mind like a page in book, ball it up, toss it away.

My father passes me the rolls at dinner. Tells me I probably miss my mother’s cooking at school. He bets the food isn’t nearly as good. But it should be, my mother says, it should be for all the money you’re paying, dear.

And my father smiles at me. I take whatever he gives me. I cannot look him in the eye.

* * *

On Saturday morning, I peel away the sheets and sink to the floor beside my bed. My bedroom feels like a guest room. It doesn’t feel as if I have ever lived here.

I wait until I hear my father on the stairs before I go into the bathroom. I look at myself in the mirror. I look just as I feel: empty. Foolish. Shattered. And that was how Finny looked as I walked away from him. The beautiful, symmetric features of this face cracked like a shattered mirror. And I didn’t know that the sound I was hearing, clogging up my ears as I took the train back home, was the sound of my own heart breaking.

I spend the day in front of the radio. News. Music. More News. There’s a new film coming out with Veronica Lake. I think about how I used to like Veronica Lake. I think about how I used to like a lot of things, a lot of people, even though I would never tell them so, and there’s a gaping hole now. None of it matters. I spread my hands out on my lap and see they’ve browned from being outside. When did I change? How swiftly I have become a different person, in and out of a wash-ringer, and I’m flattened.

My mother comes in, flipping through envelopes, and having a nice chat with the mailman at the door. There’s a dog barking somewhere. There’s a new girl in the neighborhood. There’s a mailman, and a milkman, and Victory Gardens. There’s my father getting ready to go volunteer somewhere. And it all goes on, and on, and on. Why can’t it all stop? Why can’t it all just _stop_ and let me think?

“Gene,” my mother says.

I turn to her.

“You have a letter here.” She holds it out to me, and for some inexplicable reason I cannot move. She pauses at my temporary paralysis and lays the letter on the table.

I stare at it for a long time. So long that it seems the corners are moving. Like a cartoon. It will sprout legs and run away from me like I am Bugs Bunny and that envelope has a mind of its own.

I go to the table and pick it up. My address is typed neatly with a typewriter. There is no return address. I hear my mother humming shrilly in the kitchen, and I take the letter upstairs to my room. I shut the door. I lock it. I turn it over and over in my hands.

I open it at last and see, at the top, written in his slightly slanted hand: _My dearest Gene_.

I let the paper fall, fluttering to my lap. All the breath leaves my body. I pick it back up and begin reading, feverishly, my eyes moving so fast over the words. I don’t know what I was expecting, but the words pour out of the page directly into my heart. I can see him writing it. I can see him sitting at the desk, pencil in hand, smiling his bright smile as he writes these words to me. For a second I think: none of it ever happened. We are not changed. We are Gene and Finny and we will meet out by the tree. We will lay in the grass with his head on my chest and he will run his lips all over my neck and I will undress him and he will undress me and I will chalk this all up to a terrible, terrible dream.

But the letter ends.

Abruptly.

There is no signature at the end. No sign-off. It just…ends.

I flip it over. I look for another page in the envelope, but it is empty. I read it over again. It is unfinished. Finny sent me an unfinished letter. Why?

Then I see the date in the corner, dated just a couple of days before we parted. Tears sting my eyes. And before I can blink them away, I begin to tremble, and now they’re streaming down my face, and I feel my whole chest concave. And I think that it is then that I fall apart. I think this is the time to fall apart. And I do.

I shatter.

Like a mirror.

* * *

The neighborhood girl’s name is Pearl.

My mother must have arranged it. The first time I say hello to her, she comes by to bring my mother more canning jars from her mother. Pearl stands in the entryway and talks to my mother about how her mother works at the armory. I’ve seen her walking home after dusk in dusty blue overalls, and her hair wrapped up in a kerchief. Pearl has hair the color of corn silk and eyes the color of mud, but she has a nice smile and a soft voice.

I take her to a film. She sits primly next to me in the theater wearing bright red lipstick and smelling of permanent lotion. I take her to another film. She wants to go to the ice cream place afterward, but I tell her it’s late and I walk her home. The sun has barely set. A lady walks by us with a small child and emeralds in her ears and around her neck. I start walking too fast, and Pearl can’t keep up with me. I kiss her goodnight at her front door. Her lips are plump, red, and dry. I promise I’ll come calling the next night, and I don’t. I never see her again.

The next day, I wait for my mother to leave for the market. I pull the telephone into the entryway closet, stretching the cord as far as it will go. I dial the operator and give them the number. There’s a series of crackly clicks and then it begins to ring. It rings twice and a woman answers.

At first I don’t know what to say, so I simply croak out, “Phineas.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Is…,” I try to disguise my voice. “My I speak to Fin - Phineas, please?”

“Just a minute,” she answers. Then, “may I ask who’s calling?”

I hesitate. “A friend. From Devon.”

I hear the woman take a breath, like she may ask something else - perhaps for my name and I hope to God she doesn’t - but then I hear nothing but a crackle of the phone line because it is long distance and I’m sure neither my mother nor my father would be happy with the expense I am foisting on them. Seconds go by that feel like hours. I wrap the cord around and around my fingers until they turn purplish.

I need to hear his voice. I don’t know what I will say or if I will say anything, but I _need_ to hear his voice. I need it, even if all he says to me is how much I have hurt him and how much he hates me now, I need to hear his voice.

“I’m sorry,” the woman’s voice comes back. It’s small and tinny. “He’s just gone out. May I take a message?”

My heart sinks. “No message.” And I hang up.

* * *

I have dreams. Terrible dreams.

In one, Finny and I are at the tree. It’s like it always was. I come around the tree and he’s there waiting for me. His emerald eyes look like actual emeralds and his smile is wide. We are only inches from each other when the tree starts to move. Two bark-covered legs sprout from its trunk. The branches form into arms and fingers. Then I see two eyes pop out with leaves for eyelids and the eyes and the face look like Leper’s eyes and face, and he bends down, the sound of cracking and snapping, and his eyes grow bigger and bigger and Finny and I run away. But I run the farthest. I run into the river and leave Finny behind. Then I realize I am underwater and there’s something spongy and sticky sucking at my feet. And it pulls and pulls, no matter how hard I try to fight it. Everything gets black and then I wake up, nearly falling out of my bed.

I don’t go back to sleep. I sit there until the sun comes up.

And then, I start doing things. It seems as if something else has taken control over me, like I am a puppet.

I am alone in the house in the mid-afternoon. I go into my father’s study and find his collection of encyclopedias. I pull H from the shelf and thumb through it. I find _homosexual_ and begin to read. My face grows hot and my throat closes up, but I force myself to read it over and over again until its seared into my brain. Until I can say the word, quietly to myself, and feel a strange sense of recognition. Feel a strange sense of understanding.

I start writing Finny a letter. I start and stop. Ball up pieces of paper and toss them on the floor. I erase words, scribble through sentences, and nothing is coming out right. I stay up late into the night. I tap my pencil on the side of my desk until the sound gives me a headache.

_Dear Finny._

I pace and pace around the room.

_I hope you are well. ~~I must tell you the truth:~~ I have not been well since I last saw you._

I rip one page up into teeny tiny pieces and toss it in the garbage can.

_I miss you. So terribly much. And I must confess to you, that I have made the gravest mistake._

I see the words from the encyclopedia swimming behind my eyelids as I try to think. Leper has turned into a tree and he points his leafy twig-finger at me and he says -

_~~Please understand that I was afraid.~~ I was afraid of what Leper had seen and what he might say to others. ~~Perhaps I am not as brave as you. In fact,~~ no one has ever called me brave. Except you._

Leper calls me a name. A derogatory name. I heard it before, in passing, and I first heard it as a child. My mother covered my ears and told me it was improper language and only improper people use it.

~~_Please accept my deepest apology._ ~~

~~_Please forgive me._ ~~

~~_Please Finny, please don’t let it be too late._ ~~

The sun starts coming up. I have only a few lines written. I stare down at the paper and read it over. It feels stunted, as if my thoughts are runners stumbling over hurdles. As I sit by my window and watch the sun rise, I recall his words to me. Words that seem to flow from his heart directly into mine. Perhaps I am not as eloquent as him. Perhaps my way with words has been boxed in by what is proper. Finny poured his heart out to me. I bite my lip and know what I must do.

I must pour my heart out to him. All of my heart. All of me.

I neatly fold up the paper and place it in a drawer. I get dressed. I pack a few clothes in a knapsack. I tip-toe past my parent’s bedroom and down the stairs. I take an apple from the counter and place it in the knapsack. I scribble out a note and leave it for my parents by the telephone. I make sure I have the money I saved from a few summers ago. I was saving for my own radio to have in my room. It seems silly now. So childish now. Silly, childish Gene.

I walk briskly in the dawn to the train station. Doubts begin to claw at my thoughts about how long the journey will be and if Finny will even want to see me, but I ignore those doubtful thoughts. I must do this. I must see him.

I must pour out my heart to him. Face-to-face.

* * *

I have had plenty of time to plan what I will do.

By the time, the train arrives in Boston, I have decided: I will wait outside his home until I see him depart. I feel sure - quite sure - that if I were to come to the door, he will shut it in my face. And if his mother or father were to answer, he will give them some excuse. Of course, I don’t know all of Finny’s comings and goings, but I do know this: he must be outside daily. He loves trees, water, and sunshine. So, I know he will not tolerate being indoors for too long. This trait of his makes me smile to myself, because it is something about him I have grown to love.

And I have written that very thing in the letter I will read to him. Yes, I have written him a letter. A letter I will read out loud to him because I am afraid I won’t be able to do it otherwise. I must plan things out. I must put thought into my words. We will be returning to Devon in only a week or so, but I cannot wait that long. I must tell him. Now. It’s inside me, and I must get it out.

It is mid-morning when I find Finny’s home. I find a spot across the street, sit on a step, and I wait. I do not know if he has gone out already, but he will have to come back home. Perhaps he’ll come back for lunch or dinner, but leaving or going, I will see him.

People walk past me and pay me no mind. I watch his front door. I look up and down the street.

I wait.

Hours go by, and I get hungry. I have a slice of dry toast wrapped in a napkin from breakfast on the train. I eat that, but a few minutes later, I’m hungry again. I check the time and it is afternoon. If he has gone out, surely he will come back for lunch. I stare at the door. I look at all the windows, but see no movement. I begin to worry. He did not mention that he and his family were going anywhere. I know he would have told me.

My stomach grumbles a complaint, and I give in to its demands. I find a market down the street where I purchase a Coke and a sandwich. I bring it back to the stoop, devour it in seconds, and keep one eye on his front door and the other eye on the street. I see men in uniform parade by. I see a lady out walking a poodle. I see a man puffing on a cigarette.

I do not see Finny.

The afternoon goes by, and I am wilting. I am getting impatient. Nothing has stirred inside that house for hours. No movement of curtains. The door has not budged. Have they gone away on vacation?

Just as I am beginning to think I have come all this way for nothing, I see a tall, blond man in a suit saunter up to the door. He opens it and goes inside. I stand up and nearly sprint across the street. That man must be Finny’s father. But where is Finny?

I begin to pace the sidewalk and chastise myself for doing such an impulsive and foolish thing. My parents are likely angry with me now for leaving so suddenly and without their permission. And I should have called before I left. I should have called to make sure someone was home, but now I know his father is home. Where is he? Or his mother?

Now it is evening. Now would be the time to come home for dinner. I search the streets desperately. I see a lamp go on inside of a window. Tired and impatient now, I approach the front door. I knock louder than necessary, and a woman with thick, wavy brown hair answers.

“Yes?” She smiles at me. She has Finny’s smile. Or rather - I’m assuming she’s his mother - he has hers.

“I’m looking for Finny. Is he home?”

“No, I’m afraid he’s not,” she replies with the same smile.

“When do you expect him back?”

“Oh, not for a while. He’s gone off to school.”

I look at her, puzzled. “But - we don’t start back at Devon for another week.”

“Oh, you’re a friend from Devon?” Her smile grows wider.

“Yes. Has he gone back early?”

“Oh, no, no.” She shakes her head and looks at me in confusion, and I feel a solid cold lump of dread forming in my stomach. A million possibilities begin to flip through my mind like a film reel.

“I don’t understand.” I swallow the solid cold lump. I feel as if I should say something more, but it gets stuck.

“He’s not going back to Devon,” she says slowly. “He’s gone to military school.”


	5. Chapter 5

I suppose I should have told you.

Perhaps in the letter I sent to you, or maybe I should have spoken to you the day you called. But that letter, Gene, was a fragment of time, frozen like a photograph. In that letter, I expressed to you how I felt, and I didn’t want to damage those words with words of parting. Because I can’t go back to Devon now. I can’t share a room with you now. All I have done since I’ve returned home is think of you, wish for you, and love you. I will only do the same in September, only you will not be thinking of me, wishing for me, or even loving me. How can we go back to being “just pals” when it’s not the truth?

And I thought maybe you merely needed time to think.

I needed time to think.

I thought about what does it matter if everyone knows I love you and you love me? How can there be anything wrong with that? But you said so, and I don’t accept it. And I’m sure we may encounter trouble, but that trouble will be bearable if you and I are together in it. Won’t it? How can you not see that?

I thought about you until it bordered on obsession. My heart so broken, and yet your face was the only one I wanted to see. I need you, Gene. I need you like air. I need you like water and sun and rain and clouds. I need your stormy eyes to guide me, because without them I’m lost. And I don’t know what to do.

My father sent me a telegram, weeks before we parted, about military school. I didn’t mention it to you, because I sent him a letter telling him I had no interest. I wanted to graduate from Devon with my friends. With you. He, of course, insisted it would make better use of my skills and a better use of his money, because this war, he said, this war Phineas, will not be ending anytime soon. I didn’t want to face the inevitability of it. After all, weren’t we happy? Couldn’t we enjoy it for as long as we possibly could?

And so, when I arrived home, he brought up the topic again. I mulled it over. I lay awake most nights thinking of you and your silver eyes staring into mine. The sounds you make when I touch you. The smile you give me when we meet out by the tree. Our fingers threading together. The tip of your tongue circling my nipples. Waking up with you in my arms. Oh, Gene. I think about these things until my eyes are soaking wet, until my pillow is stained with my tears, until the ache inside me is unbearable. Gene…I will never love anyone the way I love you. That I am sure of. We were meant to be. I know it! But what’s the use in believing so, if only one of us does?

I decided the day I mailed you the letter. I never finished it, and I think it’s because I don’t want us to be finished. I left it just as it was - no end, no finality. At least not for me. I hope you got a sense of that when you read it. And despite my sadness, I wanted you to see the words I wrote before you walked away. Those words are the purest, truest words I have ever written. And you know I am not nearly as skilled with such things as you. I can’t go back to Devon and cause you embarrassment or pain. I know you felt what was between us just as deeply as me, but fear and doubt have taken you over. They are stronger than all the love I can give you.

And so I mailed the letter and rode with my father to Virginia.

By the time my father and I take a train down to Lexington, they’ve already started their fall term. My father and I sit in the office of Colonel Weathers. He has a ruddy, ancient face as broad as a dinner plate. It looks to me as if the last war he fought in was the American Revolution. Do you know who he reminds me of, Gene? Mr. Ludsbury! He has that way about him, and I know if you were here, you would think so, too.

Colonel Weathers says to my father that I should enroll in the spring. Even though I would much rather wait (it would prolong my pain and I fear I’ll have to return to Devon and see you turn away from me), my father sits back in his chair, adjusts his tie, his smile congenial, and begins to ask the great Colonel about his medals. He wears so many medals! You would think so if you saw him. And as my father charms this man - as is his gift - I look out the window at all the cadets marching across the drill field. _West Point stride_. This would be a place you would like, Gene. All is in order, and there are so many rules.

Before long Colonel Weathers and my father are laughing like old friends. Colonel Weathers gives me a hesitant look and says that I may stay on a probationary basis. And I must pass all my aptitude tests. And wouldn’t you know, Gene, they give me a trigonometry test? I think about how you worried over your test. I think about how you may have passed it if it wasn’t for me. Maybe it’s best that I am no longer there to distract you.

I sit in the library for hours, at a long table, and I stare at the lines of sunshine through the windows, illuminating the dust, and wonder about you. I can barely concentrate. You’re in my thoughts every second of every day. I wonder if you can sense that. I wonder if you are enjoying your vacation while I sit here in this dusty library, taking test after test. My father leaves me. He says he’s proud. He says I will be glad I have done this when it comes time to enlist.

I pass all the tests. They give me a uniform. A pair of shiny, black shoes that I must polish every day. They put me in a room with two other boys - Hamish and Fred. Hamish has large ears; Fred has large pores. And so it begins: my new life, so far from home and so far from you. My world becomes a straight line. We wake at 4, we must make our beds with tight corners, no wrinkles. Our uniforms are stiff and swish as we walk to breakfast in perfect order. We run around the drill field. We attend classes. Everyone’s head is held straight, chins parallel to the ground. It sometimes feels as if I am watching myself from somewhere above. I sometimes feel as if I have no thoughts at all.

I toss and turn on the hard bed at night. I give up on sleeping soundly. Hamish and Fred snore, and they never smile. My only moments of true peace come when I think of you in bed beside me. Sharing space, sharing dreams, sharing ourselves. I like to think of you by the river, waiting for me. I like to think of your scent of sweet grass, sunshine, and fresh linen. And if I think about these things long enough, hard enough, it begins to feel real. It begins to feel as if you are there beside me, keeping me together, kissing my eyelids, and if I turn just slightly I’ll feel you up against me.

Then.

Oh, then…

It starts all over again. I am jolted awake and rushing (in the most orderly way) through my day.

I’m so far from home, Gene. And I’m so far from you.

* * *

Days and days go by.

It feels like months, but only a couple of weeks pass.

I’ll tell you what it feels like: jumping from the tree for the first time. Sailing through the air, those seconds of freedom, of suspension, of hanging in the air. It lasted only seconds, but arms and legs are outstretched, nothing to hold on to. Nothing to grab you from the air like a giant hand. And then there’s the splash. Submerged and surrounded, you’ve slowed down, completely immersed. It’s just like that. _Exactly_ that.

I’ve never ran so many laps in my life. I run until I can feel my lungs splitting. Blood pulsing in my gums. At least then I know I am alive. At least then I know I did not drown.

Something is happening, Gene. Inside of me, outside of me.

On the outside, I begin to see you. You’re the brown-haired boy marching in front of me during drills. You’re the studious and serious boy beside me in the library. And, one day, I see you running past me off the drill field towards the showers. I see it is you. I swear it is you. The way you run, your profile, and your height. My heart feels impaled. My stomach clenches like a fist and I run up to you, I grab your shoulder, and the face looking back at me is sunburned and sweating, and it isn’t you, and he says to me, “You got a problem?” And I just stand there, hands on my knees, my head spinning, trying to catch my breath.

I am so far from home, Gene, but I am not far from you, after all. Am I?

In the afternoon, I am leaving Colonel Weathers’ office. He inquires about my progress and sends telegrams to my father. Everyone here is hardened like stone, and I am nearly one-quarter of the way there. I am walking down the steps to the exit when I hear your voice. My steps falter for a moment, because it’s your voice full of pain. I want to plug my ears, because I know it isn’t really you. It couldn’t possibly be you.

I turn the corner and see a Lieutenant standing there, looking firmly down at…you!

It _is_ you!

Gene!

I blink over and over. My throat begins to swell. My eyes begin to sting. And then, you turn to me, and I see your face is so pale. There are dark circles under your eyes. You see me and I see you. Something passes between us, an echo, you look me over, panic springs into your eyes.

I take a step towards you. “Gene?”

You look as if you might say something. Your chest begins to heave. Then you sway a little, your eyes roll back in your head, and you collapse at the Lieutenant’s feet.

* * *

I wait until the nurse leaves the infirmary.

I slip into the room where you sit on a bed, holding an ice pack to the back of your head. I linger in the doorway and you turn to look at me.

A storm brews in your eyes. A weeping, hopeless storm. I want to come closer to you, but I don’t know…I don’t know what to do. You look me over, from my shiny black shoes to my slicked up hair. What I must look like to you; one-quarter stone and still completely yours.

“Are you alright?” I whisper.

You nod slowly. “It’s only a bump.”

I carefully walk closer, as if you’re a timid little creature that will up and run away. I sit down beside the bed. You watch my every move. I say nothing. You say nothing. Outside, sergeants are barking orders. There are whistles and stamping boots. We are both so far from home.

After a time, we both speak at once: “What are you doing here?”

You take the ice pack away and touch the back of your head. I see a tear has fallen, and you don’t bother to wipe it away.

“Your mother told me you were here,” you say. “So, I got on the train…” Your voice trails off, and I want to spring up from this chair and wrap you in my arms. But I must look like Leper right now - baffled.

_Leper._

He’s the true cause of all this, I believe. Oh, how things might have been, Gene, how they might have been so wonderful still if he had not been there!

“You spoke to my mother?” I ask.

“I went to your house…I waited. I wanted to see you, to tell you…” You blink back more tears and I want so much to kiss them away. Your eyes lock onto mine. “It’s too late, isn’t it?”

I shake my head. I don’t understand. “Too late?”

The nurse comes back in. We both sit up straighter.

She gives me a look. “Shouldn’t you be out _there_?” She nods to the window.

“No, ma’am,” I reply. “Upperclassmen.”

She plumps a pillow and urges you to lie back. “This boy is suffering from exhaustion. You’ll leave him to get some rest.”

“I don’t want him to go,” you speak up. “He’s my friend. Can’t he stay?”

She looks from me to you, raises an eyebrow. “Colonel Weathers has sent your folks a telegram. I’m sure you’ll be in a world of trouble soon enough.” She turns to me. “Don’t you stay too long, young man. This boy needs his rest and plenty of fluids.” She places a pitcher on the bedside table. “Stay hydrated. Virginia in August is nothing to fool around with.” And with that she takes her leave, shutting the door, and we are alone.

You carefully sit back up, gingerly touching the back of your head, wincing in pain.

“Should I get you something?” I ask.

You stare at me for a long while. The sun has begun to come into the room at a different angle, settling on one side of your face, making one eye the brightest silvery gray. I focus there. It calms me.

“I can’t believe,” I begin. “I can’t believe you went all the way to Boston, then to here…I…I don’t -”

“I needed to see you,” you interject. And then you burst forth into a stream of words, it pours out of you like waterfall. “I have to - I needed to tell you - that I made a mistake. A huge mistake, Finny. And I know Leper didn’t see anything. I know he didn’t. But I kept thinking that we would be discovered and then I’d lose you for sure. I’d never see you again if anyone found out, so I - I don’t know - I couldn’t face us being separated in that way. It would just tear me apart if that happened, so I _wanted_ to believe Leper had seen us. An excuse, a reason, and I know it sounds ridiculous. I know I was being ridiculous, like you said, but…” You pause there. Take a few breaths. Your face has gone pale again and I’m afraid you might fall over. “I need you. I can’t be without you. And even if it is too late, even if this is the last time I’ll ever see you, I need your forgiveness. Please. I can’t leave here with you hating me.”

There are more tears, and I can’t stand it. I can feel them stinging my own eyes. I get up from the chair and stand in front of you. I brush them from one of your cheeks and then the other. “Gene. I could never, ever hate you. It doesn’t work like that. It’s not a light switch to be turned on and off. I’ve never stopped loving you. I never will.”

You close your eyes, relief flooding your face.

I get as close to you as I dare. “I need you, too. Always, Gene. Always, I need you and always I will love you.”

I want to kiss you. I see you lean towards me like you might, but we stop, we remember where we are. We remember there would be more trouble here than anywhere else. I take your hand in both of mine, and there it is: the connection between us, a pulsing line of electricity, I feel it prickle on my skin. I feel it filling up my heart until it may burst, and it does, it spills out of my eyes and onto my cheeks.

Gene. Oh, Gene. _My_ Gene.

You shake your head. “But it’s too late. Look at you. You’re…here!” You gesture around us.

“Yes. But I’m here on probation. It doesn’t mean I get to stay.”

“How long is your probation?”

“Two months.”

Your shoulders fall. You hang your head. “This is all my fault.”

I squeeze your hand. I bring your gaze back on mine. “It’s not too late. Let me talk to my father. He brought me here just a few weeks ago. And I only agreed because…I didn’t think you’d ever want to see me again.”

A deep pain comes over your features. “I’ve messed everything up. I’m so sorry. I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”

“Please don’t be like that. We’ll find a way. We will.” I brush your knuckles against my lips. “I promise you. We will.”

You don’t look so hopeful, but at least I have your love again. To think you traveled all this way to see me, to think you have traveled so much for me, how could I be angry with you? How could I hate you, Gene Forrester? You are the only thing that matters to me, truly. A million words of love, lyrics and poems, fill my heart, my mind, and I would give them to you. I would lay them at your feet.

I look at the door. It’s shut and the hallway is quiet. I kiss your lips and taste the wet saltiness of your tears. You return my kiss with a hunger, with a need that matches my own. I pull away and lean my head against yours. “We will be together. I promise you, Gene. We will.”

* * *

Your father comes.

He drives all the way to Lexington.

I catch a glimpse of him, and I can tell he was worried and confused and he shows it with anger. He meets with Colonel Weathers and the nurse. Heads shake, lips purse with disappointment, and your father asks you why. Why, Gene? Why did you come to Lexington? What a thing to do! And you simply shrug your shoulders. You say you were bored, you wanted to take a trip to see your friend.

I hang back and Colonel Weathers gives me a stern look. The adults continue with their head shaking and talk of how these young people behave these days. Why, there’s a war! Surely, our youth would be more obedient. You flick your eyes over to me, a small smile at your lips and this pleases me. I _live_ to see you smile, Gene Forrester. I smile at you, encouragingly.

Then your father lays a heavy hand upon your shoulder and takes you to the car. You turn to look back at me. I give you a nod. I can almost - _almost_ \- hear it in your thoughts: _I love you_.

And I do. So. Much.

This I promise you: we will be together again. I will find a way back to Devon. Because we were destined to be, Gene. I know it, I feel it, and now that I know you feel it, too, I will do my damnedest. Everything will be just as it should, falling right back into place.

And, always, always, always, we will be together. No end. No goodbyes.


	6. Chapter 6

I sit down on my bed in our room.

My bed is all made up. I have put away my clothes. I have exchanged a few hellos and good-to-see-yous with a few other boys. And Finny’s bed is empty. The mattress and bedclothes are rolled up at the end, ready for an occupant that may or may not ever come. I sit there for a while and stare at his bed, while noise and up and down the halls of orderly chaos ensues.

The room seems too big. Too quiet. I know if he were here now, he’d be talking and talking away. I feel as if I cannot begin anything until he’s here. Nothing can start yet, nothing can breathe yet, nothing can move until he’s here. So, I keep my place on the bed. I keep myself still. I know I will have to move eventually, logically I know this, but I don’t want to. Finny’s return isn’t definite. And this indefinite thing, this suspension, this eternal pause within me, is all my own fault. I sit up straighter. I want to own it. I want to take the responsibility for this mishap into my own hands, examine it carefully, take it apart, learn each and every twist and turn, study its symmetry. I want to stare it in the face, unwavering and with courage.

But I shrink on the inside.

No one has ever called me brave.

Except him.

And he isn’t here, and I’m the reason he isn’t here, and I’m the reason everything at Devon is a board game with a missing piece. I couldn’t believe it was him. In a uniform, and somehow he seemed restrained. Emerald eyes dulled, in dim light. So much change in such a short time. I can’t keep up with it all. Was I only sleeping before I met him? It feels as if the second I shook his hand, he told me his name, and he smiled is the very second I woke up. Then it all went tumbling forward, everything springing into motion, a carnival ride beginning slow, gears working, gaining speed, and now my life has come to a severe and drastic halt. I am stuck at the top of the ferris wheel and I cannot get off.

I couldn’t believe it was him. I still feel embarrassed for fainting in front of him. At that point, I was so tired, running on fumes, and I couldn’t just stop. I couldn’t just stop until I found him, until I saw him, and he was so different. The shock of seeing him in uniform reminded me that will be his future. It will be my future, and there’s nothing we can do. What can be done?

Leper starts following me around like a puppy off his leash. He doesn’t speak much, but every time I turn there he is. He’s said nothing about seeing Finny and I by the tree and no one else has either. I am so incredibly stupid. So incredibly selfish. The fact that Finny loves me even after what I said to him, what I did, makes me need him more than ever. Nothing is the same. I am lost in a fog, all day long, just a transient. Just here. Just… _here_.

I get the first letter from Finny just a couple of days after returning. He wrote it the day I left with my father - who lectured me all the way back home just to get another one from my mother, and they are aghast at my behavior for I’ve never done anything like that - and Finny’s words soothe me. I lay on my bed and read them over and over. He’s so hopeful. Such an optimist. I almost believe it when he says: _We will be together. I promise you, Gene_.

I write him back immediately. I apologize over and over. I feel as if I’ll never be able to do it enough. Then I tell him about Leper. I tell him about Brinker annoying the life out of me before breakfast. He’s moved across the hall from our room and he’s so annoying! I am not interested in discussing why Finny isn’t here to anyone. Because they ask me. Oh, they certainly ask. I tell them all a half-truth, that Finny’s father wants him to try military school and they all look at me with surprise and say, is Finny REALLY at military school, and I reply, yes Finny REALLY is at military school, and it’s a whole thing I have to go through with each person and I’m sick of it.

I make up his bed for him. Like he’s coming tomorrow. One must have hope. He never says in his letters what it is precisely that he’s going to do or say. In his third letter to me he says his father doesn’t address Finny’s wishes in his letters to him and I can imagine poor Finny sitting there with all these letters, pulling him in two different directions, and it’s all my fault. _It’s all my fault!_

I feel worse and worse as the weeks go by. I fail a test. I don’t bother to study for another. Chet gloats. Leper follows. Brinker annoys. And I’m just sick of it. I go out to the river one chilly evening and see the leaves are starting to change - green to gold - and I sit there and toss rocks and twigs into the water. I look up at the branch we jumped from - oh, God it seems like a million years ago - and it shakes in the wind. I hear it creaking and it sends a chill down my spine. I hear someone behind me and turn to see Leper coming over. He doesn’t seem to notice me. Or care enough to notice me. He has folded up a piece of paper into the shape of a boat. He lays on his stomach on the bank and carefully sets the paper-boat on the water and pushes it.

We both watch his paper-boat sail into the river at a haphazard angle.

“I think I might join the navy,” he says quietly.

I throw in another rock that sends a ripple to the paper-boat and it rolls along precariously.

“Or maybe the army,” Leper says. “I don’t know yet.”

The paper-boat tips over. It’s a sinking ship. All men overboard.

Leper turns to look at me. “What are you going to do?”

I watch the sad little boat flow along helplessly. It’s just a piece of paper now. I imagine putting a piece of paper in a bottle, setting it in the river, just to see who finds it. Just to see if it goes all the way to Virginia, where Finny can pluck it out. A green-glass bottle. That matches his eyes.

I get up and get into the river. I wade in, soaking my shoes and pants, all the way to my hips. I grab the sunken ship from the water. I trudge back to the bank and look down at Leper, still laying on his stomach, looking up at me, his mouth open a little, open in confusion.

I throw the sopping wet piece of paper at him. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make one damn bit of difference.”

And then I walk away, soaking wet, and there’s a sunken ship somewhere inside me, somewhere I can jump, and I am merely treading water. I am merely a vessel.

* * *

I run all the way back to my room with another letter from Finny.

I shut the door, lock it, get on my bed and begin to read. His handwriting is more slanted than usual, hurried. He begins each letter the same way. He tells me how much he misses me, how the thinks of me every second, and how much he loves me. I like to read that part twice. I like to trace my fingertips over the letters as if I am writing it with him. I express the same things when I write him. And I feel it deep inside me, I feel it in every cell, in every ounce of blood, in every centimeter of bone.

Then he says he only has a couple of weeks left for his probationary period. Thus far, he’s kept his bed unmade, his shoes unpolished, and he’s showed up late to a dozen drills. The Colonel isn’t happy with him. Is it wrong to be excited about that? Of course not! It means they’ll make him leave. It means he’ll come back here, but it also means his parents will be disappointed in him. The War Department might find out what a shitty soldier he’d make, and then what? They’ll make him cook? Make him scrub latrines? The encroaching terror of this certain future nearly eats me alive. We’ll be pulled apart, one of us sent to Okinawa and the other to Dresden and that’ll be the end for sure. My hands start to shake and the paper trembles.

We’ll be torn apart. And what if he’s killed? What if a Nazi shoots him? My thoughts begin to race at a pace my heart tries to match. And I think _this is why_ \- this is why it was easier to separate from him now, before the inevitable comes, before boot camps, training, guns, and tanks, and I can’t lose him that way. I can’t. I squeeze my eyes shut. I feel out-of-control, I feel hopeless.

I hear a tap-tap-tap at the door.

I open my eyes.

_Tap, tap, tap_. “Gene! Hey, Gene!”

Instant annoyance. _Brinker_.

“Not now!” I call angrily.

“Open up for a second!”

I stick Finny’s letter under my pillow and open the door. Brinker leans on the door frame as if it was built especially for him. As if a builder one day said to himself, _you know what this might be good for? To hold up Brinker Hadley!_

“What are you up to?” He grins.

“I’m studying,” I frown.

“Don’t you ever stop?” He tries to peek into my room. “Finny still gone?”

“What does it look like?”

He makes a face at my attitude, then says, “What’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing. I’m tired. And I’m busy.”

“Incredibly busy, I see.” He rolls his eyes. “Say, I know what’ll make you feel better - Carole Landis.” He wiggles his eyebrows.

“No thanks.” I start to close the door, but he catches it.

“Chet’s got a magazine down in the Butt Room. Come on.”

I shut the door on his annoying face. I stand there until I hear him grunt in discontent - _dammit, Gene_ \- and he finally walks away. I go back to Finny’s letter, to the only piece of him that I have, and I want so much for him to just appear in front of me. To come right through the door, wrap his strong arms around me, and it will be okay. Then tomorrow peace will break out all over the world, and everything will be okay.

I hear a shuffle at the door and some laughing. A piece of paper is pushed through the crack and the hushed laughing continues down the hall with footsteps. I go over and pick it up.

Carole Landis in a bathing suit.

I rip it up and throw it away.

* * *

At dinner, I sit with Brinker and Leper and hate everyone and everything.

I try to bury the fact that this terrible unfairness, this incomplete picture, is my own doing. I don’t eat hardly anything. I haven’t felt hungry at all. I don’t participate in any sports. I can barely manage the basic parts of my day. I feel as if I am in limbo, awaiting some eternal fate. And all around me there’s talk of war. _The war, the war, the war_. Shortages of this and shortages of that. We have no maids and the food is bland. There are complaints about the slow travel. Train schedules changing and being held up. I don’t want to listen to anymore. I want to cover my ears. Brinker announces loudly that he wants to enlist now. He’s tired of being here and he’s tired of doing nothing. He holds an imaginary sword in the air and there’s mock cheering and laughing, and I swear, if I hear the word _war_ one more time - just one more time! - I will take this dinner plate and I will smash it over -

Everyone stops their yapping for a second. There’s a crowd of boys gathering by the entrance. I crane my neck to see what they’re doing. Brinker stands up and goes over. I stand up and wonder if there’s a fight. I see a part in the group, and there’s someone in the middle. Someone engaging, someone joking, someone…and then I see…

It’s him.

It’s Finny.

He turns and his eyes meet mine, his smile wide, his eyes excited. I feel my stomach fall to my feet. Now everyone’s left me here, and they’ve gone over to him, and he’s making quite an entrance. There are pats on the back in welcoming, questions, and handshakes. Everyone is so happy to see him, so enthralled by what he’s saying. I stand there and feel as if something has been stolen from me.

I can’t move for a moment. I think about his last letter and how he told me he still had a couple more weeks to go. It’s October now. He wears a jacket and a scarf. He is perfect. As perfect and as loved as he has ever been.

I make my way over, and Finny pushes through, and makes his way over to me. His emerald eyes penetrate mine, his hand on my shoulder, giving it a squeeze in greeting. Friendly, brotherly, no one would know.

I’m getting ready to ask, but he’s being whisked away, out of the dining hall. I wait a beat, then follow along.

* * *

Brinker and Leper sit in our room much too late as Finny entertains them with stories from military school, and they eat it up, excited and inspired, as if Finny had been a real soldier. I am a partial participant in the conversations, but my patience is wearing thin. Finny hasn’t clearly said what happened and how he was able to leave and come back. No one else seems concerned about this detail except for me. Is it only a visit? Is he back for good? Why did he not tell me?

At long last, Brinker and Leper head for the door, and I’m ready to shove them out and slam it in their faces. As soon as they’re out in the hall, I bid them a hasty goodnight, and shut the door. I lock it. I turn and Finny is right there, hovering beside me like a magnet.

I take a few seconds, because I’ve been waiting on this moment for what feels like a hundred years. His face seems thinner and his shoulders broader. The corners of his lips tip upwards in a small smile.

“It’s good to see you,” he whispers.

“What happened?” I ask. “Did you flunk out? Were you kicked out?”

He blinks. “What does it matter? I told you I’d come back.”

“But…,” I begin and I’m not sure how to continue. “How? How did you get back?”

His eyelids flicker like a candle. His face darkens for a second. “I guess it turns out I’m not cut out for military school.” Then his face brightens to its normal level. “I missed you so much.”

“And your father just let you leave?” I take a step closer to him.

He puts his arms around me. His voice is as soft as a gentle breeze. “Yes. So, here I am. Now, please, let me hold you. I’ve been dying for you for months, Gene.”

And as soon as his arms are around me, I realize how much I have been dying for him, an unquenchable thirst, starvation, and I put my arms around him and hold him tightly against me. I hear him sigh in my ear. “I missed you, too,” I say. “I missed you so much.”

He feels different. Harder, firmer. I must feel different to him. Thinner, weaker. We get into my bed, fully clothed, and lay on our sides facing one another. He suddenly looks just as weary as I feel. It was a long journey from Virginia, a journey he never would have made if it wasn’t for me. I caress his face, his neck, and his eyes close. I think about him in that uniform. I think about him in another uniform, hopping on a train, off to someplace far away, off to shoot and kill, and it is so far from him. It is an image that doesn’t match the boy in bed beside me, and I want to remember him as he is right here and right now. In this time and in this place. I want to memorize every inch of him and I do so first with my eyes, then with my fingertips, then with my lips.

Our clothes come off slowly, buttons and belts undoing, and I am unfolding before him, and I feel his gaze on me, and it feels as if he is doing the same. My fingers find the soft throb of his pulse at the base of this throat and I feel him, living flesh and warm-blooded, and he kisses me with a lazy neediness, and I return it with a desperation that uncurls inside me, and flows between us until we are both breathless.

I begin to think that I should treat every moment with him as if it is the last one. Because that last moment will come one day, won’t it? It’s an unavoidable truth. Enlistment is an ugly, cold shadow lurking in every corner waiting to reach around our throats and drag us away from one another. I close my eyes and slide my fingers into his hair as he kisses my neck, down my chest, and over my stomach. I feel something wet drip on my skin and I tilt his head up. There are tears coming down his cheeks.

“What’s wrong?” I ask him.

He wipes them away, blinking them back. “I think,” he takes a shaking breath. “I think…I’m just happy.”

I tug him up so his face is level with mine, kissing him. I hold him in my arms and he holds me in his arms, and this is how we spend our first night together, the first one in months, in each other’s arms, and with him crying softly into my shoulder until we both fall asleep.


	7. Chapter 7

I have a secret.

Well. I have two secrets.

And you are the most delicious, the most wonderful secret of all, Gene Forrester.

Admittedly, things are different. It’s like a small wall began to form between us, ankle-high, and we trip and fall over it as we try to navigate the _after_. After our cold separation, after you returned home, after I made a decision that has affected me greatly. After you risked so much to come see me and we were separated again. You hang your head and you speak words of remorse. I have done whatever I can to reassure you, but your guilt is stronger than all the love I can give you. When will my love be stronger than anything else you feel?

But then there are nights like this one. My fingers are splayed, studying the firm, soft plane of your chest. My palms attach themselves to the subtle arch of your back, and then the moonlight comes in through the window in just the most perfect way, illuminating the speckles of cinnamon and hickory in your dark hair. Your eyes go from molten steel to a silver eclipse, and I kiss the smattering of freckles on each of your shoulders. Then your lips, red and moist from my kisses, part in a smile that only I alone can see. And your fair skin glows in the moonlight, in any light, even in the darkness, and it’s as if you appeared from the Heavens in just this way, just for this moment, and the very sight of you steals my breath. Steals my heart. Steals all my senses, and I find that place that you enjoy being kissed the most - a hollow of skin just behind your jaw and below your earlobe - and I kiss you there until you are squirming and shaking.

It’s only after you have fallen asleep that I lay awake and think about my secret. My _other_ secret. I have not been forthright, but I have not lied to you. I would never, ever lie to you, Gene. I have simply made some careful omissions. But I have kept my promise to you, haven’t I? That is enough, I think. Promises are the most important part of any relationship. They must be kept no matter what; no matter what one may have to do in order to keep them. It troubles me, of course, but there’s still time. Gene, we still have time. I don’t want to waste a single second of it.

You help me with my school work after dinner. I have fallen behind, but you are determined to catch me up. It’s hard to not get distracted by those silvery eyes of yours. I’ll put my book down, I’ll put your book down, and I’ll kiss you - languidly, sweetly, just because I want to - but sometimes I’ll suck and nibble at your bottom lip until you are panting and you’re aroused, I can feel it against me, and I’m aroused because you are, but then you’ll stop me, a half-smile on your face and you say to me, “Later.” And my scalp feels as if it’s on fire.

Then there’s a _later_. Always a _later_. Then your eyes are on me the whole time, all silver and stormy, and nothing else matters but you and me. We get lost in our own world. No one else can seem to get in. I see what you mean by Brinker being annoying. He really is, isn’t he? He invites us to the Butt Room and to play poker with him, but we always tell him no. I can’t tell if his feelings are hurt or if he’s just jealous. I think it’s the latter, and let him! Let him be jealous! Let him be annoying. Because it doesn’t matter, does it, Gene? Not as long as I have you and you have me.

It’s unseasonably warm one day. I decide I’d like to go for a run, and you come along with me. We decide to skip chapel and jog along the track. The sky is cloudy, but the leaves are changing, and you’re there beside me, and we run like we are Olympians. We run like we are leaving here together, to some place far away (but not Virginia, I don’t like Virginia much, and hope I never see that place again), to some place where there is just you and me and this cloudy day and auburn and marigold leaves, and we’re moving, breathing, alive, and then an idea comes at me with such force it nearly halts me in my tracks. I begin to slow down as this idea takes shape, as it forms a foundation, a frame, then all the details fill in. You slow with me, looking at me questioningly.

I am just about to tell you, when I feel a fat drop of water on my head. Then another. Then another. We look up and see the sky has darkened. Then the clouds rip apart and there’s a downpour upon us. We are nearly soaked to the skin within seconds. We find a shelter by the track and stand underneath it. As I catch my breath and look over at you, I see you laughing. Really laughing. With joy, with happiness, and I don’t think I’ve seen that. Ever. Your silvery eyes dance behind the rain drops, your smile is wide, and you are _laughing_ , Gene Forrester. I am so happy to see you like this, so pleased, that I begin to laugh, too. We stand there for a few minutes, embracing the moment, watching the rain come down so hard it bounces up off the track.

“Maybe we should have gone to chapel,” you smile.

“Maybe,” I reply. I come closer to you and we lean against each other, shoulder-to-shoulder. The connection is apparent. Anytime we touch, anytime we look at one another, that connection is there, like a telephone wire from ocean to ocean. “I love to see you like this.”

There’s desire in your eyes. You lick away a raindrop that has dripped down your face from your wet hair. You stare at my mouth. You lean towards me and your lips feel like silken petals on mine.

I pull away and whisper, “Won’t someone see us?”

“I don’t care.” Your voice is almost a growl, and your breath is hot against my face.

And so you kiss me, out by the track, in the rain, with a passion, with an intensity, I have not felt in so long. Your tongue crashes against mine, and you put your arms around me, and hold me up against you, and you are so strong, everything about you in that moment exudes such strength, such _love_ , and I can feel your heart against mine, and it feels as if my heart is trying to pound it’s way out of my chest to get to yours. There is a heat inside me, warming and growing, aching. I did not think I could ever love you more, but in that moment, there under that shelter, with your lips so firmly, so decisively, pressed against mine, I fall deeper, and deeper in love with you. I want to tell you this, but you break our kiss, and say, “Let’s go back.”

The rain lets up only a little as we run to our room, breathless, laughing, our clothes soaked completely through. We stand in between our beds, and you look at me in earnest. You slide your hands up under my shirt and peel it off me. It hits the floor with a wet _slap_. I take of your shirt. I pause to kiss your neck, your shoulder, I dig my teeth in, just a little, just enough, and hear you groan with pleasure. Then we are naked on a bed, I don’t know if it’s mine or yours, because I am so blinded by lust, by want for you, by _sheer_ _need_ of you, I don’t notice anything else.

You nudge me on my back and begin kissing a trail from my lips, down my neck, down my chest - pausing to flick a nipple with the tip of your tongue - and down my stomach, lower to where my leg joins my body. You go down.

_Down_.

Your kisses become shy and soft.

_Down_.

I am hard against your neck, and you’re so warm. I need you to touch me.

_Down_.

You surprise me, Gene. You completely surprise me.

You take me into your mouth.

I inhale sharply, making such a sound, so unbidden, and completely shocking even to my own ears. Warm and wet, you draw me in deeply, your lascivious tongue flattening, and I grab fistfuls of the covers. And there are parts of me that have strayed apart like islands in the ocean. Parts of me disjointed like a jigsaw. Parts of me scattered like a mosaic. But it’s then that those parts begin to move towards one another, the cracks fill in, sealing up, and islands collide. A cloying smoothness to the edges, the undulating magma of my soul, closing in, and all those parts of me, Gene, they come together, they fall back into place. And my voice is strained - I try to warn you - but I feel your hands clenching my hips, holding me steady, and my fingers find where your lips are wrapped around me, and I touch you there.

And then I see white, I see stars, I see planets, I see green meadows with buds bursting forth into all the colors of the universe. And I see you, Gene. Always you, forever you. All the parts of me come together so that I can be wholly yours.

My head rolls to one side, my neck feels like rubber, and you playfully bump your nose against mine, smiling, so damn pleased with yourself. I turn so we are facing one another, and I gently nip at your chin and your lips pluck mine into a gentle kiss, and I dip my tongue into your mouth, finding my taste, all the flavors of _us_ , all the spaces filled and sealed up tight.

I need a minute. A couple of minutes. Your hand lays across my hip and you ask me if that was okay.

I look at you.

Okay? I say.

_Okay?_

I have an answer for you.

I reach down between us and find your hard, warm flesh. I feel one of your hands around my head, fingers digging into my scalp, while the other wraps around me, and I watch your face. Eyes glazing, clouds ready to unleash, lips parting to release hot exhales against my skin. Have parts of you strayed like me, Gene? Do you feel them coming together? I think I can see it. I think I can see meteors melting into one another. I think I can see the very formation of the sturdy ground in your eyes.

I take you to the place where I have just been and where I return, with you, we go there together. Your hips jerk once, twice, and hot liquid spills on our fingers, your release drips down my abdomen like candle wax, and everything slows into solemn stillness. Beating hearts, and breathless, we go back to where we began.

* * *

It’s still raining.

It’s lighter now, just a symphony of rain drops, pattering on the window. We’re a mess. The bed is a mess, but I don’t care. I lay with my head against yours, just staring into your eyes and I wonder if you see what I see. I could lay like this forever, Gene. Exactly like this for the rest of my life and die happy.

“You think anyone heard us?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” you reply. “And I don’t care.”

“Maybe we should care a little,” I venture. “With Brinker being so nosy and all.”

“I don’t think he’s here. And so what if he did? I don’t want anything to come between us. Not ever again.”

I feel as if you’re trying to prove something to me and you don’t have to. Getting caught just as we were less than an hour ago would be disastrous. I almost begin to tell you what happened to my roommates, Hamish and Fred, when they were caught. Only they were very brazen, they were in the shower together, and it didn’t end well for them.

I move to sit up, because a shower sounds nice about now, but you put your arm around me and keep me in place. “No, don’t go yet.”

I comply and lay back down. I am pleased you want me so close to you, but there is something sad in your eyes. A far-away-look of uncertainty.

“Don’t you think,” you begin, “that we should spend as much time together as possible? Now. Before…before we can’t.”

“Why can’t we?”

“The war. We’ll have to enlist as soon as we graduate.”

I stiffen a little, and I hope you don’t feel it. I try to keep my voice calm. “The war will probably be over by then. Besides, I’m going to be in the Olympics.”

You laugh. “There won’t be any Olympics.”

“Of course there will. I was thinking about it while we were out running - I’ll train to be an Olympic swimmer. And I’ll be so good, they’ll never dream of putting me in a tank or behind a gun.”

You think I’m nuts, I can tell, but that was what struck me earlier, and when a thought strikes you that hard, Gene, you are obliged to listen to it. And it’s the only way I can avoid something that is coming up all too soon. I have made a promise to someone, you see, and I cannot back out of it. BUT if I am a sensational swimmer, there is no way the other party can force me to hold up my end of the bargain. This is why I speak so confidently, because I must believe in it. There is no room for doubt.

You sit up a little and look down at me. “But there won’t _be_ an Olympics, Finny. Probably not ever again with the way things are going.”

“There will. The war will be over. You’ll see.”

You don’t believe a word I’m saying, and, honestly, that is not unexpected. But this is my only way to ensure my future is with you. _Our_ future.

“You should train, too.” I tell you.

You sit up fully and force out a laugh. “What? Train to do what?”

“You could be a runner. An Olympic runner.”

“But I don’t want to run. And why are we even discussing this?” You’re getting irritated with me, and I don’t want you to be irritated with me. You get off the bed and begin getting dressed, and I think I might be able to tell you. The words are right on the tip of my tongue, but they just dissolve.

“Hey,” I reach out and touch your arm. “Gene. We don’t have to discuss anything. I’m sorry.”

You cross your arms and look away from me. I feel guilty for ruining such a perfect afternoon, but I intend to be an Olympic swimmer. Perhaps, when the time is right, I’ll be able to tell you my exact reasons. But for now, I only want you to not be irritated with me.

I get up and go to you. I cup your face in my hands and see there’s real fear and sadness in your eyes. I want to make it go away. “You’re right,” I say. “We should spend as much time together as we can.”

You nod, your eyes have turned into iron and concrete.

“I’m serious. You’re right.”

You blink and the iron melts away. “I don’t want anything to happen. I don’t want to hurt you.”

I take you in my arms, you take me, and we are given. I am not afraid of hurting you because I know I will never, ever do such a thing. And I realize then these are the parts of you I don’t have, and I hope that I will one day. Oh, Gene, you have all of me, and I hope to one day have all of you.

* * *

My head breaks the surface, and I gulp air into my lungs.

I look over at you sitting with your legs in the water, pants rolled up, and the humidity of the pool room makes your shirt cling to your body in such an appealing way I almost forget what I was doing.

“How was that?” I pant.

You frown and tug at your tie, pulling it off. “You’re still eleven seconds behind.”

My ribs expand and contract like fireplace bellows. Eleven seconds. I am eleven seconds behind Shigeo Arai, the bronze medalist from the last Olympics. I thought trying to match the third place time would be a good start. But I can’t even start. “Maybe I should try the backstroke. That might be easier for me.”

“Take a minute and rest,” you say. “You don’t want to drown.”

I smile at you and push wet hair from my eyes. “Why don’t you get in and we can drown together?”

You give me that half-smile, your _later_ half-smile, and I see that pink flush on your throat, and I think I might just drown anyway. Drown in my love for you.

But I must somehow make myself eleven seconds faster first. 

You pull out your legs and stand up. You find a towel and lean over to hand it to me. “Get out for a minute. Then try the backstroke.”

“But I was just warming up,” I protest.

You shove the towel at me, your movements exaggerated, and I laugh. I get out of the water and dry off. The number eleven, just two ones side-by-side. 11. 11. 11. It flashes in my mind like an electric sign, bright and jeering.

“I don’t understand,” I say. “I’m swimming as fast as I can.”

You shrug. “I suppose you’ll have to swim faster.”

Even though you clearly still believe this lofty goal of mine is insane, you are here to help me, nonetheless. My helpful Gene. I smile warmly at you.

You blush and I love it. “What?”

“Thank you for helping me. I don’t know if I could do this without you.”

“There isn’t anywhere else I want to be,” you say plainly. As plain and grounded as a dry field.

I smile again and step closer to you. “Would you come to the Olympics to see me?”

You step closer to me. “I’d go to the moon to see you.”

You say things so firmly, as if it is the end and the beginning and all that will ever be. The space between us closes in and I reach for your hand, the very hand that stokes the fire between my legs, the very hand I took hold of the day you almost fell.

11\. 11. 11.

Like two figures standing side-by-side. Like two black posts in a white sea. Like you and me in the flash of light that unleashed before time began.

This is how we are standing, close, hands entwined, when we hear a throat-clear from the door. We both turn our heads and see Brinker and Leper standing there, with closed faces and eyes wide open.


	8. Chapter 8

I don’t move for a moment.

For one long, excruciating moment, I don’t know what to do. I bite back the instinct to drop Finny’s hand, and my mind moves like molasses. They’re standing right there - Brinker and Leper - four eyes, four orbs jammed into two skulls, recording this scene.

No mistake this time. No imaginary stories.

Before either of them can speak, before they can even blink, Finny flips my hand over and presses his thumb into my wrist. “See? I told you. Your pulse is right here.” He rubs the pad of his thumb over my skin. “Right there. Put your finger there.”

I catch his eyes for a second, caution signs waving emerald-colored flags. I put shaking fingers where his thumb was. “Yeah,” I say loudly. Too loud. Too much. Too obvious. I change my tone. “Yeah, I feel it. It’s right here.” And I can actually feel my pulse, frantic and stuttering, like a tiny fist beating on my artery.

Brinker’s eyes shift from me to Finny. Leper retains a look of deep puzzlement. Finny’s face breaks out into his effortless grin.

“Gene and I were having a little disagreement. He thought the pulse was further up.” He continues to towel off as if nothing is amiss. “But I thought it was further down.” He shrugs and smiles as if this is just so silly and we’ve been caught being silly rather than…something else.

Brinker blinks a few times, as if he’s been lost in thought and Finny has just brought him back. “Ah. I see.” He looks at Leper and Leper just stands there, hands in pockets, a look of disinterest clouding his features. “Well, I suppose that’s a good thing to know. Useful. Right?” He nudges Leper with his elbow and Leper nods in agreement, sluggishly, as if he’s not really listening.

“What are you doing here?” I ask them, and the words come out of my mouth sounding so accusing.

Brinker raises an eyebrow. “Looking for you actually. Well, both of you. We’re bringing the radio down into the Butt Room tonight. Roosevelt is supposed to make some kind of speech.”

Finny huffs. “Unless it’s about Olympic swimmers, I’m not interested.”

Leper surveys him coolly, and looks past him at the pool. “You fancy yourself a swimmer, Finny?”

Finny gives him a sly look. “I fancy myself anything I want to be.”

“How magical and inspiring.” Brinker rolls his eyes. “You sound like Stanpole’s long lost son. Come on then,” he gestures to Leper. “Let’s leave Finny to his magical world of hopes and dreams.”

Leper lingers for a moment. He stares at me. “You hope to be a swimmer, too, Gene?” There’s an edge to his voice, dull and rusty.

I mimic his stance, putting my own hands in my pockets. “I might.”

Leper lowers his eyes and lowers his head. He turns and follows Brinker out of the pool house. Brinker annoys. Leper follows. The usual business. The usual routine of the day splits and then stitches itself back up.

We wait a handful of seconds after they’ve gone, and then Finny and I exhale at the same time, my body deflates, and I look over at him, his eyes cast down at his feet.

“I’m glad you thought of that,” I say. “I was…I couldn’t think of anything.”

He looks over at me, his eyes dripping with sorrow. “I thought you were going to run off.”

“No.” I shake my head. “No, I won’t run off. I won’t ever do that again.”

“But they saw. They actually saw us this time.”

“They saw you checking for my pulse. We played it off. That’s what they saw.”

He removes the towel from around his shoulders. “I guess so.” He begins walking towards the locker rooms.

“Hey.” I begin to follow him. “Aren’t you going to practice your backstroke?”

“Maybe later,” he replies without turning around.

My stomach knots up in an all-too-familiar way. I don’t like the way his shoulders have slumped. I don’t like the dragging way he is walking. I don’t like the way I feel right now, with the memory of that day out by the tree so fresh in both our minds. “Finny.” I quickly pass him and stand in front of him. “Finny, it’s okay. I won’t do that to you again. I promise you. I swear to you.”

He glances at me sideways. “It’s not that.”

“Then what?” I’m hanging on. I’m grasping at the invisible thread that weaves us together. And still, after all we’ve given each other, it is so fragile. I sense it, the way I sense spider silk on me after I’ve walked under a tree, and it flays and ripples in the space between us, and that is the problem. The space between us, the canyon that is attempting to form, carved out by a river of doubt and fear, a yawning void, ever present and threatening. Even now. _Now._

I begin to speak again but he interrupts me. “It’s nothing. Nothing at all.” He shoots me a half-hearted smile. “You’re right. I think we saved ourselves.” He brushes past me, a hand tenderly caressing my arm, and disappears into the locker room.

I stand there and feel for it. I feel for that thread, and it’s still there. It’s still bounding us together, it’s still there. But if I were a spider, I wouldn’t feel him on my web. Not at this moment. Then I’d just starve only to perish underneath someone’s shoe.

* * *

Fall makes its grand, climactic entrance like so many of the debutantes I grew up with.

Bright gold, pumpkin-orange, and deep auburn leaves are her meticulously manicured fingers. The billowy clouds are her carefully coiffed hair. The morning mist is her silky gown that swishes softly as she walks in, turning her head, fanning herself with the branches of a fir, to acknowledge a potential suitor. And - like a true debutante - autumn reaches a fever pitch, a ripeness, that soon begins to sour with time.

The scarf I wear is irritating. Woolly and warm, the fabric catches on the hairs on my neck, feeling like dozens of tiny pin pricks. I remove it inside the library and close the book in front of me. Finny sits one chair away, emerald eyes scanning a page in deep thought.

“Inappropriate behavior,” I whisper to him.

He turns to me, brow furrowed.

“That’s what it would be, what they’d call it, if we…,” I let my voice trail off and watch Finny’s expression deepen.

“Inappropriate behavior could mean a lot of things, though.” He’s whispering, and I cannot think of a more _inappropriate_ time to feel a pool of heat expand in my gut. I only ever hear him whisper like this when we are alone. My reaction is practically involuntary.

I open the book back up. We’d found several handbooks for Devon School rules going back to the last World War. Not much has changed. I do find out that in 1922 jazz music was explicitly forbidden. Did listening to jazz qualify as _inappropriate behavior_?

“What happens if they accuse us?” Finny is right beside me now, his elbow touching mine, and if anyone were to see, it would appear innocent, but the thoughts that run through my head are far from innocent. Why must I be thinking these things now? This is a very serious matter and thus far, neither Brinker nor Leper have mentioned how they found us in the pool house. No one from the administration has come to our door. There have been no _I’d like to have a word with you_ or _Please come to my office_. There’s been nothing. We should count ourselves lucky, but I do not want to be blindsided.

“We’d be expelled,” I reply. “And they would certainly tell our families the reason why.”

He looks thoughtful. “That’s all?”

“What do you mean ‘that’s all’? We’d be kicked out of here for - for, well…you know, and our mothers and fathers would know. I think that’s a heavy price to pay. For either of us.”

“I know. But they wouldn’t put us anywhere? Like in a home for lunatics?”

“Why would we go into a home for lunatics?”

“Because that’s what they did to -” He cuts off, his expression falling, darkening.

I wait for him to finish, but he doesn’t. “Did to who?”

He purses his lips. “My roommates. At military school. They were caught in the showers and sent home. There was a rumor their folks put them in an asylum.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“I don’t know.” He shuffles his feet and falls silent.

I have had this feeling since he’s returned that there is something he’s not telling me. Perhaps that is why I feel like the bond between us has been weaker. Or perhaps it is simply from my own mistake. Even so, when he reveals this secret to me, it feels as if there is more under the surface, and why he would hide this anecdote from me, I do not know.

“What were they doing? In the showers?” I ask even though I know the answer. I could think of several scenarios, several ways, several episodes of _inappropriate behavior_.

Finny looks at me, his mouth a flat line, but his eyes give it all away. “They were doing enough. Enough for it to be more than clear.”

I lean towards him and speak as softly as I can. “You don’t need to hide things from me. We shouldn’t have any secrets from each other.”

When he turns to me, his lips parting like he might kiss me, his eyes like emeralds swimming, I feel that he may reveal something more. Instead, he taps my hand with a finger, an undetectable sign of public affection, and says, “That’s true. We shouldn’t.”

He once told me that I dream too much; I create possibilities only to discover it wasn’t possible. And so, I believe then that I have done that very thing with him. Finny loves me, and he wouldn’t keep anything from me. I repeat this in my head all day long, making it true, making it real, and so it is.

* * *

He swims in the early morning and just before dusk.

I am there with him to keep time, to count laps, to encourage. Although, I don’t believe I am much encouragement. We shared a secret here once. Two secrets. The first one was that I would not share with anyone that he’d broken a school record. And the second one could be our undoing. I keep watch of the door like a hawk, but we are careful. We keep a distance. We make space, and it is difficult for me, I must admit.

I watch him in the water, his face a mask of determination, his long limbs parting the waves, and I don’t understand it. All his motivation and training will come down to nothing in the end. There won’t be an Olympics. Everyone says and everyone knows. This war could go on and on, and I may be an old man living on a pile of ashes. If I don’t die in battle first.

If Finny doesn’t die in battle.

It aches. It hurts so much. I push those thoughts towards a cliff, but they cling to the side with sticky hands and will not let go. This cannot be. This cannot happen. Too many variables, too many outcomes. I can picture it being drawn on a blackboard, a never ending formula of possibilities. I try to tell myself not to think about it. It’s only November. Still time. And I wish, I hope so much, that these hours and minutes could be collected like coins. Stowed away in a jar, in a bank, and taken out when one has the need. But every second I sit here, every second Finny comes up for air, is gone. Just gone. Vanishing into oblivion, a void, and then I think about how they should not be wasted. I want to reach for him right then, reach out to touch him, hold him, because these are the moments I would collect in a jar. In a bucket. In a silo, filled to the brim with us, here and now, it slips away like sand through my fingers.

I hear the door open and Leper appears. My heart begins to pound a beat of anxiety, and I sit up straighter. He comes over and sits next to me, taking off his shoes, rolling up his pants, and setting his feet in the water. He says nothing for a time, and I just stare at him. Finny hasn’t even noticed. He’s midway through his second-to-last lap.

“It’s weird to see someone swimming when it’s so cold outside.” Leper speaks at last. “I’d rather swim when it’s hot.” He turns to me. “Wouldn’t you?”

“I guess.” I cross my arms, making my irritation known.

He says nothing more. He splashes his feet in the water, and I want to push him in it. What is he doing here? Why is he always around? He’s become such a nuisance that I am now thinking he’s the annoying one and Brinker can just be a squashed bug on a windshield.

“Hey! Leper!” Finny calls from the other side of the pool. He waves, his breaths coming in short bursts. Even with Leper sitting beside me, I cannot help but to admire Finny. Admire the way the water glistens on his skin, the golden firmness of his body, the muscles of his stomach covered in a soft patch of hair. A soft patch of hair that feels so good against my chin.

Leper waves back. He slumps down and looks over at me again. “Why aren’t you swimming?”

“Finny is the one that’s training. Not me.”

Leper brings a finger to his teeth and worries at a nail for a moment. “I’ve decided to join the army. I’ll be leaving soon.”

“I’m happy for you,” I scowl.

“Will you miss me?” His voice is soft, almost sad. “I’ll miss you.”

Before I can answer, Finny has come over, dripping all over the concrete and smiling like a champion. “What brings you by, Leper? It’s almost dinner time.”

“I wanted to talk to Gene.” He stares at his feet and leans back on his hands.

“Oh.” Finny reaches for a towel and dries off. He looks at me and I shrug. “Well. Should I leave you two alone?” He tries to say it in jest, just a stupid joke, but Leper looks up at him with such a look, such a clouded, dark expression, that Finny’s smile quickly dissipates.

I stand up. “We should be getting ready for dinner. We can’t be late anymore.”

Leper remains seated, looking down into the water. Finny and I exchange a glance, then go into the locker rooms leaving Leper behind. I wonder if he really stopped by to tell me about the army or for some other reason. I wonder why he shows up at random and at the most inopportune times. I don’t know, and I don’t care, and right before I open the door, I hear a sound coming from the side of the pool, like a tired animal sighing into the wilderness.

* * *

Neither of us go home for Thanksgiving.

My father writes that they would rather I was home for Christmas and the travel expense would be easier to afford. Finny’s father, on the other hand, doesn’t write him at all. But his mother sends her best wishes and tells him they will see him over Christmas. I see him holding her letter, his jaw working, tightening, as he looks past me out of the window.

I ask him if he is okay.

He doesn’t answer me.

I have never felt such dread for Christmastime as I do now.

But we have now. We have this time, we have the entire dormitory to ourselves, and we make double sure, triple sure, there is no one else in the hall, above or below, and every little sound becomes enhanced. Every little step, every little breath raises in volume and pitch. And this is what we have: each other, privacy, decaying leaves, and sunsets that end the day, cloaks us in darkness, and guards our secrets.

Our _inappropriate behavior_.

We decided this would be the time. With a skeleton staff around, with a warm bed, with a chilly breeze whipping past the windows, with a sincerity and a promise, Finny threads his fingers through my own, holding tight, his eyes mesmerizing and his skin so warm.

“Are you sure?” I whisper to him.

He nods. “I’ve never been so sure of anything.” He presses his head to mine. “I want you, Gene.” And then his lips are on mine, his chest against my chest, his breath mingling with my breath, and his arms, his legs, every part of him is touching me, and every part of me is touching him, and we are covered.

There’s lubricant, there’s preparation, there’s my hands and lips all over him, making every part of him sing, I direct his senses like a symphony. We don’t hurry through it, there’s no rush, and I must go slow, and I do. I slide myself inside him, and feel the give and the take of this moment, all these moments, all this time and _I know, I know, I_ _know_ , I love him and he loves me.

I grit my teeth, he sucks in a breath, and I ask him if he is alright. I feel him taking me in, hot and slick, he surrounds me. It’s gradual, it’s slow, it builds, and he squeezes me tightly. I kiss him, over and over, and he relaxes until I’m all the way inside him, to the hilt. And I think that if I were a cavern, he would be the light, illuminating all the deepest, darkest parts of me. And if I were an oceanic trench, he would be the golden rays of the sun, penetrating the inky blackness to find me, to seek me out, and pull me to the surface. And if he were across a canyon, so impossibly wide, I would be the bridge. I would stretch myself, I would break myself to reach, and reach, and reach across for him, if only for the briefest of touches.

And as we love each other this way, it begins to feel as if we have been making love like this for hundreds of years, thousands of years, in dozens of lifetimes before this one and will continue to do so in dozens of lifetimes after. Eyes-to-eyes, underneath me, his sweat mixing with my own, and the only thing I hear is our gasping and his moaning for me to _not_ stop. Nothing is between us, nothing above, nothing below, and we could be on a cloud, we could be suspended in mid-air, mid-jump, shaking branches and splashing water.

No space. There is no space between us. Threads pull, wrap us up, tighten into a cocoon, and we are covered. Safe. Kept. I open my eyes, and I watch his face. I die and revive in a pool of emeralds. My arms begin to shake. I can hardly hold myself up. I drink him in, I let him slip down my throat, let him fill my lungs as I fill him with my heat. He stiffens beneath me, flattened, and I collapse on top of him, gasping for air, gasping for his light, I drink it in, and he bears my weight.

And in the calm, in the after, with shaking hands and shaking breaths painting whispers of love and devotion on each other’s skin, I think it to myself. I think it out loud, I smile, I find it a comfort. I find it as it begins and ends, and will languish in the sunlight:

_Inappropriate. Behavior._


	9. Chapter 9

You watch me drag wood into a pile, the look on your face full of concern.

“Do you even know how to build a fire?” You ask me.

I grin. “There isn’t anything to it. Wood. Matches. There you go. Fire.”

You look around, your forehead creased with worry. “Aren’t you supposed to dig a hole first? And make sure there’s no dry grass or leaves around?”

Now it’s my turn to worry. You do have a point, Gene. My Thoughtful Gene. I bet you read about this in a book. I am only guessing. I thought it wouldn’t be so difficult, but we find a clear patch of dirt, dig a partial hole with the toes of our shoes, and pile up the wood. We drag a log from the bank of the river, I light a match, and fan the flames of our very own bonfire.

We sit together on the log, my hand resting on your knee, and we watch the fire grow, sparks and flames, heat and smoke. We move closer, our breaths puffing out in front of us, and I feel so close to you. I lean my head against yours and you lean into me, tenderly brushing your fingertips over my hand. The early evening air contains the promise of snow, heavy and still, braced for a cold white blanket to cover the nearly bare branches. They look like arms and fingers, reaching up to the moonlight, as if they cannot get enough of it.

And you.

And you.

And. _You_.

I close my eyes and think of you and me, making love, your hushed voice, your stormy eyes, pouring into mine like a stream. So close to you, one and joined, I have replayed every second of it in my mind. Oh, Gene, I don’t think I could live without you now. I touch your chin and bring your face to mine. I want to stare into your eyes, by this fire, in this cold night. The flames alight your face with a glow, your eyes appear dreamy, like the silver lining on every cloud. I steal a kiss. You steal one back. Tonight is perfect. We have made it perfect. We have made it ours.

We sit in peaceful silence for a time. I think about how wonderful it is to be here with you. For us to be almost alone. No matter how much I try, however, thoughts of my father sneak into my mind. It hurts my feelings a great deal that he has not written me, but that is something I expected. He’s still angry with me, I believe. I want so much to tell you everything, but I don’t want to ruin this time we have together. It will just weigh us down. So, I push the thoughts away, and immerse myself in this moment with you.

The fire crackles cheerily and you’re so warm beside me. We talk about the Thanksgiving dinners we remember as children. You tell me about one when your father took you out hunting for the turkey and you didn’t want to kill it. I tell you about one when my cousins came to stay with us. They were very little, very curious, and accidentally knocked the pumpkin pie off the table onto my aunt’s lap. We laugh about this, and I wonder if you and I will be celebrating any holidays together one day. I wonder if your father would dislike me after you went to Lexington to see me. My father wouldn’t dislike you, Gene. I’m sure both my parents would like you.

I make a wish. I set it into the curling smoke from the fire so that smoke can rise into the sky and take my wish to the stars. I wish that no matter what, no matter what happens to us, no matter where we go, one day you and I will be celebrating the holidays together. Turkeys and pumpkin pies. Fireplaces, gifts, and hot chocolate. I wish for it with all my might, and I watch my hope for us travel up in the smoke where it can become true.

And as I sit here with you, the time going by, I feel like there is no past and there is no future. There is only now, and there is only you and me. Always, you and me.

“I don’t want to enlist,” you say softly. “But I’d be a coward if I didn’t.”

“I don’t think anyone really wants to fight,” I reply. I press my lips to the slope of your neck and you shiver and I love it. I. Love. It!

“That’s not true. Do you hear Brinker when he talks about it? He’s ready. He’s ready right now.”

“At least Leper will be gone and we won’t have to worry about him.” I, like you, am curious to know why he’s always around. I am actually worried about him joining the army. He’s the not the fighting type. He’s not the type to run bravely into battle. I hope, for his sake, they let him fly a plane or steer a boat.

And, as I think of poor Leper going to the front, I say a little wish for him in the smoke of the fire.

Then I make a plea for myself.

Then for you.

I pack up those thoughts as quickly as I can and hide them away and I turn to you. I turn to your silvery eyes, your warmth, your hold upon my heart, and I kiss you. You kiss me back, slowly and tenderly, you groan into my mouth and I do the same. Need, want, and hope shoots through me as your lips taste my own. Oh, Gene. Gene! I wish you could reach inside me and feel the love I have for you.

You gently pull your lips away from me, caressing my face. “I love you so much, Finny. So much.”

“And I love you, Gene. More and more everyday.”

I lean my head against yours and embrace the absolute perfection of this night. You see, Gene, only a moment like this can be shared with the one you love. You can take a trip to the beach with your best pal, but you can only sit by a fire in this way with the one you love above all others, the one that fills your empty spaces, the one that you give your heart to, the one you never want to live without.

I begin to say more, but you tense up beside me, your head turning towards the river. I follow your gaze and see a figure, dark and undeniably human, standing among the trees.

“Do you see that?” You whisper, slowly withdrawing your hand from mine.

“Yeah.” I move over a little, putting some distance between us. “You think it’s one of the staff?”

“I don’t know.” Your lips barely move.

I squint to see past the flames, but the figure remains dark and featureless. It looks like a shadow. It doesn’t move, and whoever it is, they appear to be looking right at us. We sit stiff as planks for a time while the figure stands there. Then I watch it begin to walk towards the dormitories, the gait slow and leisurely, someone that doesn’t need to be anywhere anytime soon. When it disappears behind a building, we both take a breath.

“That was strange,” you say.

“It was,” I agree. “I didn’t think anyone was here.”

“Maybe we should go back inside.” You move to stand up. “I’m getting cold anyway.”

“And I’ll warm you up,” I promise, and you give me a smile. Oh, I love to see you smile!

And so the spell is broken, but it’s just as well. We fill a bucket with river water to extinguish the flames. We make sure the fire is completely out. We put the log back where we found it. We go back to our room, hand-in-hand, heart-to-heart, I take what you give, and your words and your love and your body surround me. I am a part of you and you are a part of me.

Forevermore, you are a part of me.

* * *

Alone again.

We get into bed, plenty of blankets, plenty of body heat. You touch me as if it’s the first time, out by the river that warm summer night, your hand skates along my chest and my fingertips draw patterns on your stomach. I’m held captive by your fervent gaze and I am bursting. I am bursting with feeling, with words, with secrets untold. There is so much I want to tell you. Should I tell you, Gene? Should I tell you about the promise I made? Promises are sacred to me, you must understand. And I have only made this promise to be here with you right now. Isn’t it better this way? Isn’t it better that I have returned and we can be alone, just like this, right now?

You kiss me and the thoughts pop like bubbles, gone. And you lay back, and I kiss your neck, and you roll your hips against mine, and I forget everything. I even forget my own name. I kiss down your body, your stomach muscles contracting under my lips, your breathing labored, and I feel your soft hair on my chin. You’re hard against my neck, aching for me to touch you, and I surprise you, Gene. I completely surprise you.

I take you into my mouth.

My lips are tentative at first, but I find my pace, and I feel your fingers curling into my hair. I love to give you things, Gene. I love to give you this. I love to give you everything, inside of me, outside of me, it moves around us now, and can you feel it? I grab your hips, I groan, you gasp, and I love to give this to you, because that it what I wish to do for you always: give. Give you all that I am, all that I have been, and all that I will ever be. There is no war, there is no school, there is nothing but that! There is nothing but all I have inside me, given to you, laying it all at your feet.

You begin to tremble, and I know you are close. I slow my pace a bit, and feel your grip tighten. You groan so loud, I feel it in my bones. I feel as if -

There’s a _shuffle, shuffle, shuffle_ out in the hall.

We both freeze.

A second later, it happens again.

_Shuffle. Shuffle._

I withdraw, and you pull at me. “No, please. Don’t stop. It was just the wind. Please don’t stop, Finny!”

“Just let me check,” I whisper to you.

I put on some clothes and you groan with frustration. Oh, don’t you worry, Gene. I am not about to leave what I have started unfinished. I give you a quick kiss and step out into the hall. I see nothing at first but the glow of the moonlight through the windows. As I turn to my left, I catch a glimpse of a figure standing at the end of the hallway. A shadow. I startle and see the figure move closer, into the light, and see that it’s Leper.

“Oh,” I say with semi-relief. “Oh, it’s just you.”

He says nothing. He turns from me and looks out of the window.

“What are you doing here?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “My mother said it would be easier just to come home early for Christmas.”

“But I thought,” I move closer to him. I hope you have heard us out in hall and are making yourself decent. Just in case. “I thought you were joining the army.”

“I am. I will. In January.” Leper turns back to me. “I thought you’d be swimming.”

“Oh, no, no,” I laugh nervously. I suddenly feel so nervous. “Not today. I decided to take a break for the holiday.”

Leper’s eyes roam from the top of my head to my feet. “Where’s Gene?”

“Reading,” I answer quickly. Too quickly. I wince. “We were reading.” I wince again. _Reading_. Of all the things I could say! How ridiculous is that?

Leper stares at me and it feels as if there’s darts coming out of his eyes into my own. I avert my gaze and join him at the window.

“I like to watch the snow,” he says quietly.

“Yes,” I agree. “It’s pretty.”

I did not think it would snow so soon and yet there it is, a blanket of white forming all over the ground. The wind howls and I long for you at that moment, curled up under the blankets, warm and safe. I chance a look towards our door, but you haven’t emerged. I want Leper to go into his own room so I can return to you, but in my peripheral I see his eyes shift to me.

“Are you really going to swim in the Olympics, Finny?”

“Yes,” I reply confidently. “I’ve almost beaten Arai’s time. If I can swim as fast as a bronze medalist, then I can definitely be a contender.”

“What about Gene?” His voice has a quality to it that reminds me of syrup seeping from a bucket.

“Gene will be my trainer. He’s helped me so much already. I’ll need him there for sure.”

Leper’s eyes return to the window. “Isn’t that a cruel thing to do?”

I look at him quizzically. “What do you mean?”

“Well, with you being an Olympian and him being by your side, it would deprive him of fighting for his country. Wouldn’t it?”

“The war will be over by then. In fact, you may never see combat yourself. Good always overcomes evil.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Does it?”

“Of course. Always.”

“If Gene follows you, Finny, then he’ll be called a coward.” Leper turns to face me fully. I have never seen him look so cold. Like a stone etched from the snow-laden rocks outside. “His father will be ashamed of him. Is that what you want for him?”

I shake my head. “No, no, of course not.” I do not like Leper’s line of questioning, and I can barely gather up my own thoughts to find what it is exactly he’s implying. You a coward, Gene? Never! You’re brave! Never would I call you a coward or let anyone else do so either. “There’ll be no cowardice to assume anyway. Like I told you, the war will be over.”

“The war could be over, but what will Gene do while you’re out gathering medals and breaking records?”

I blink. I blink again. Surely you would want to help me, wouldn’t you Gene? And we would be together. I have pictured us living by the ocean. I have pictured us owning a boat. I have pictured us waking up at dawn and laying on the beach together. But in all of my imaginings, I have believed you would want to be there with me. Would you? Would it be enough for you?

I look down at my feet. “I don’t know. I just thought he could help me. With the training, the schedules. Things like that.”

Leper turns back to the window and places a hand on the glass. He watches the snow come down in heavy, fat flakes that stick to the trees, the shrubs. Branches bend under its weight. “Doesn’t seem like a good life, does it? You get all the glory, the attention, and he’s left in the shadows.”

“He wouldn’t be in the shadows,” I mutter and I don’t even believe it. Leper has put doubt into my mind. Just like that. I glance towards our door and think about you and me, at the Olympics, you holding out a towel for me as I get out of the pool. Perhaps I have won a medal. Perhaps it’s only the silver. I would wear it like a badge of honor, because I would only think of you when I wore it. I would only see your eyes in it if I held it in my hands. Everything I do would be for you, Gene. But would it be enough? Would it be enough for you?

“It doesn’t matter anyway.” Leper gives me a wry smile. “The war won’t end. You’ll both be sitting in a tank like me.” He steps away from the window. “Sweet dreams, Finny.” He goes into his room and shuts the door.

I stand as still as ice. That’s what it feels like: pure ice forming in my veins.

I have been a fool. Am I dragging you into something that wouldn’t make you happy? Would your father be ashamed of you if, instead of enlisting, you were to follow me? I think about him the day he came to Lexington. His mouth drawn in a stern line. His eyes flat like stone. The disappointment on his face as he looked at his son, his disobedient son, come all the way to Lexington, Virginia. For me. To see me.

I hang my head. I have only thought of myself. All my plans have been to avoid something that I haven’t even told you. All my plans have been a diversion from the truth. Leper is right. It would be cruel. It would be selfish. And I am the coward, Gene. I am the most cowardly of them all.

Before I go back into our room, I decide. Before I open the door, I resolve. Before my eyes find you sitting on your bed, wrapped in a blanket, your hair tousled (oh, you are truly the most wonderful, most handsome boy in all the world!) and your mouth opening to speak, I accept.

I cannot harm your future. I cannot make you follow me into one of my silly, stupid dreams.

“Who was that?” You whisper. “It sounded like Leper.”

I shut the door. I sit next to you. Yes, Gene, I am here to finish something. Yes, Gene, I am here to protect you. And then I take a breath, a deep breath, I hold my eyes closed for a second. Then I turn to you, your eyes gleaming like a silver medal, worn around my neck, living in my heart, buried in my soul, and I tell you my truth.


	10. Chapter 10

I don’t believe a word of it.

I don’t want to. I can’t. Not a word.

I wrap the covers around me tighter and tighter. If I could, I’d disappear within them.

Finny’s words clang like a bell. A funeral bell tolling for the loss, the end, the light that has been snuffed out. I close my eyes and I don’t believe it. He sits beside me, his elbows on his knees, his face aimed at the floor. He cannot look at me, and if he did I would see the tears. The very same that are warm against my skin, and why must they feel so wet? I have no shame. I have nothing but this blanket and his words, still in the air, still in my ears, still trying to swim through the torrent in my mind.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Before? When you got back?” I ask him. I’ve asked variations of this question at least three times. He always gives me the same answer.

“I’m sorry,” he says. Again and again.

“All this time…you knew all this time?”

“I’m sorry, Gene.” He catches a tear on his fingertips. “I only wanted to be with you. I didn’t want you to be angry with me. I didn’t want it hanging over our heads.”

I wipe my eyes, and I have no shame. I have nothing but space appearing underneath me. The ground is gone, it’s gone and we’re suspended here. “So, next month then. That’s when you’re leaving?”

He sits upright and takes a breath or two. “Yes.”

I wait for him to say more, and I think how quickly things can change. Shouldn’t I know this already? Shouldn’t I know what it is like to have the most wonderful thing on earth within your reach and to, in fact, have it in your hands, feel its weight, see its radiance, then watch it slip through your fingers like pollen in the wind? Shouldn’t I know how it can happen in just a blink of an eye?

In just a handful of minutes spent out in the hallway, on a snowy night, speaking to Leper.

_Leper._

_Why is he here?_ Why is he preceding these things? It’s as if he’s some damned soul, sent to this world to follow Finny and I and bring misfortune.

“I promised him,” Finny says softly. “It was the only way I could come back to Devon. To see you, to be with you. It was the only thing I could do.”

And the only thing he could do was promise his father he would join the navy in the New Year. The _navy_. He was at a crossroads in military school. His attempts at sabotaging himself were not working. So, he wrote to his father and begged him to return to Devon. In order for Finny to return, his father made him make this promise. His father will come to take him to California to boot camp. His credits from military school will transfer so he can graduate early. It’s all been settled. It’s all been done. Finny will have an early graduation.

Early and without me.

Early and gone.

Early and it grows late. A clock ticks somewhere, mocking, reminding. The days are finite. This has bloomed and shriveled like an under-watered tree and it’s brittle and we are only inches apart, but there’s too much space. It feels as if we are standing on either side of a canyon.

“I thought,” he continues. “If I were to be a swimmer, we could be together. My father would see. He would see how good I was, and he wouldn’t make me go. But it was selfish of me.” He turns to me now, his eyes reddened with tears, the green of his irises still so bright as if there’s hope trying to break through. “I was being selfish, Gene. I just wanted to come back to be with you, but it wouldn’t have made you happy, would it?”

“What do you mean?” There’s too much space. About as much distance as it is from Devon to California. And this is my fault. One event leading into another. Cause and effect. Finny would never have gone to military school if I hadn’t pushed him away. He never would have considered it. At the center of all this turmoil is me. I am the origin. I feel as if I might collapse under the weight of all that I am responsible for. What have I done? Consequences keep piling on top of me, crushing me to the point I fear I may suffocate.

Finny’s voice gives me temporary relief. “I mean that - what I mean is that if I were to be an Olympian, and you were to come with me, you wouldn’t have been happy. Always in the shadows.” He whispers to himself. “I never meant to put you in the shadows.”

“What shadows? I’d be happy no matter where we were, no matter what we were doing, as long as I was with you.”

He closes his eyes and fresh tears fall down. Why would he think this? There is so much I owe him. I owe him a tremendous debt, and I know encouragement is not my best skill. In fact, it is perhaps my least developed emotion, but I would go anywhere with him. Anywhere at all! If the earth were flat, I’d follow him to the edges and jump right off with him. I’d follow him into burning lava. I’d follow him into an icy mountain. I’d sink to the bottom of the sea with him in my arms. I’d follow him to the edge of a tall tree and jump into a river with him. I would do it all! I would…I would…I would go…

Suddenly, I feel as light as a feather. A solution comes to me with quickness and clarity. The ground returns beneath me.

I grab his hand. “When your father comes, I’m going with you.”

He looks at my hand then looks at me.

“I’m going with you. To California. To the navy. I’m going.”

“Gene…” He shakes his head.

“It’s the only way. I can’t be without you. And if we’re together in training, maybe they’d put us on the same ship. Together. Whatever we do, it must be together.”

For a split second, the tears let up, and a light appears in his eyes. But it fades and drowns under a pool of more tears. “No. No. You have to graduate. After how hard you’ve worked…it’s not the right way. It wouldn’t be the right -”

“Why isn’t it right?” I demand. “Grades mean nothing. Graduation means nothing. It all means nothing if I’m not with you.”

I turn his face to mine and my insides melt at the sight of him. Even in distress, he is magnificent. Truly. Completely. My light, my firefly, shining in the darkness, under a velvety sky with puncture marks dotting through and through. One single candle in a dark house. I could wave my hand over the flickering flame to feel its warmth, stare into its center and there I would find him. I would find Finny and I would be at peace. I cannot lose what has penetrated my darkest caverns and my untold secrets. I cannot. I will not! “This is right. This is the only thing that matters. Do you remember?” I take his hand and put it against my heart. “Don’t you remember -” I put my hand against his heart, beating wildly, just like my own, “- _this_?”

His eyes clear, the tears dry up.

“I’ll go with you,” I say clearly. “I’d go anywhere with you.”

His hand presses into my chest, feeling what he felt that night, only a few months ago. Doesn’t he know that it’s his? Even if he told me no. Even if he left Devon without me. Even if he boarded a ship to fight the Japanese and forgot all about me - my heart would still be his. Whole and bleeding and heavy and yearning and _his_.

“It feels the same.” His voice shakes.

“The same,” I repeat.

He takes me in his arms. I hold on, I cling, and I have no shame. He made a promise to be with me. He sold his entire future just to be with me. I must be brave, as brave as he believes me to be, for him and for myself. I will sell my future, too. I will give it all up. A future without him is pointless. This is the debt that I must pay. What does anything else matter besides this? As precious as water in a desert. As rare as a comet shooting through the sky. I want to belong to him. I want him to belong to me. I just want something to be ours.

And this is it.

This night, this solemn vow, this promise. And, oh, these winter nights are so cold. And, oh, these winter days they begin and end, a snowball pushed down a hill, rolling along, gathering and growing and I will go. I will go and I will be. I will go and he will be.

I take his face in my hands, and I see it there. Green and new. Flesh and blood. Healing wounds.

_I will go, I will go, I will go._

And his voice whispers against my skin, pulled from the wreckage, and there is hope again.

“Yes…” he says.

“Yes…” I say.

California sunshine and the open sea.

_Yes._

* * *

I write my parents.

I tell them the truth. Not the whole truth, of course, but enough. By the time they write me or board a train for Devon, I’ll be long gone. We won’t be waiting on Finny’s father. If Leper can up and leave for the army, then Finny and I can up and leave for the navy. I hope I _never_ see Leper again.

Finny writes his father and says he will leave straight from Devon with me. If it must be done, if it must happen, then it must happen now. Why put it off? Young men are needed and we have fake draft cards. I put away my books. I pack up my clothes. He made a promise to be with me. I have made a promise to be with him. Wild animals couldn’t drag me away from him now.

It’s all settled. It’s all done. I will _go_.

Our last night at Devon, we lay in bed together. We spend these precious hours in each other’s arms. Everything will change once we leave, once we’ve embarked on this new journey. And there isn’t anyone else I’d rather go with and there isn’t anywhere else I’d rather be. He covers me. He bathes me in his light. We leave behind many nights of love, many secret kisses, and whispers of eternal devotion. We leave behind the moment we first laid eyes on one another. We leave behind the moment he gave himself to me, and I gathered up all his scattered pieces made them my own.

We leave behind this night, the night I let him take me and make me his. He is solid and strong, gentle and assuring. He makes love me to me as if it’s the first and the last time anyone will ever make love upon this earth. On my stomach, his weight on my back, his fingers laced through my own, we begin and we end. I don’t know where and I don’t know how. I don’t recognize my voice in the sounds he evokes from me. I come undone with his lips trembling on my neck, my bottom lip catching on the knot under his thumb, and his heart pounding against my spine. I uncoil in a white-hot bliss, and he doesn’t let me go until the sun rises. He breathes my name, reverently, against my breastbone, and the space closes up, we melt into one another. One flesh. One heart.

Will they split us up? I stare into his eyes and all my concerns dissipate because now I understand: nothing can keep us apart. If they split us up, we’d just find each other again.

And again.

And again.

As I watch his face, a peace comes over me. There is no end to this. How could there be? I have found what many will never find. I have felt what many search for their whole lives. It’s here in my arms, right now, right here. Two diamonds plucked from a black velvet sky and placed here to see and to feel and to live the only thing that matters at all.

“Are you scared?” He whispers.

“No. Are you?”

He smiles. “You give me courage.”

“You give me light.”

He kisses me and I return the promise his lips make.

We don’t sleep at all. The sun pokes through a cloudy morning sky. It falls upon his face, and I see all the mornings of our lives. I see us as grown men, waking up just like this. As old men, waking up just like this. I see it all: fall, winter, and spring.

But the summer ends.

Or rather it stays. Summer stays here at Devon and in our hearts.

He sits up. He takes my hand. “Are you ready to go?”

And I go.

I will go.

1948

There’s a flash from the cameras, syncopated and nearly blinding.

I have to avert my gaze as I approach. Wembley Pool is emblazoned with a rare ray of sunshine. It dances across turquoise waves and sun-kissed skin. I remove my blazer, suddenly hot, and the tang of chlorine invades my nostrils. The stands are emptying out for the day. Cheers still echo and there’s a proud display of Union Jack on every lapel.

The Brit that won the gold is in the center. The Australian guy with the bronze is on the left. And on the right, the man with the silver, with the American flag on his jacket, is none other than Phineas. This is what the British press calls him. They don’t know him by any other name.

But I do.

I stand off to the side and wait. I watch a Danish woman - she also won a silver medal - speak excitedly in a language I don’t know to a group of people. They hang on her every word and despite the language barrier, I find myself also hanging on. The pride and the triumph shine through. It’s easy for me to get caught up. So much, in fact, I nearly miss it. I nearly miss the second Finny’s emerald eyes meet my own and his expression splits into a million prisms of light.

He has to push past the fella from the BBC, who mumbles an unnecessary apology, before he can come over to me. His grin is so wide and his shoulders are so broad, I can hardly contain myself. We meet by the high-dive, and I shield my eyes from the sun. The joy on his face turns my insides into mush.

“You’re here!” Finny exclaims. “I didn’t even see you. Where were you?”

“Up there.” I point to a random spot in the stands. I honestly don’t know where I was sitting now. But it was somewhere over there. Up high. The best view, I think. The best way to watch Finny slice through the water, parting waves like he was born to do so, and rise from the choppy pool only two and a half seconds behind the Brit. He was so close.

He comes as near to me as he dares and applies the same restraint I am also enforcing. It wouldn’t do to have the BBC photographing the US silver medalist in the men’s 400 meters in the arms of a mysterious man.

“I thought you were graduating today,” he whispers.

“Yesterday,” I whisper back. “I caught a plane at Idlewild. I wouldn’t miss it.”

He wasn’t expecting me to be here, and the fact that I have surprised him, the absolute joy on his face, makes my heart jump rope in my chest. I’d planned it this way. I told him my college graduation would be today. I say a silent thank you to the creators of the G.I. Bill that made this even possible. In his last letter to me, Finny wasn’t sure if he’d also get a degree. He was busy. I was busy. We had to make do.

But now the jungle has cleared and I can finally see the sky, the light, that is him, shining just as bright as his silver medal around his neck. He didn’t look the least bit disappointed when it was over. In fact, I watched him go over to the Brit and offer him a congratulatory handshake in the way only Finny could do. My palms turned pink from how hard I was clapping for him.

He’s figured it out. A sly grin spreads over his face. “You’re sneaky, Gene Forrester.”

I take a step closer. “And your -” My voice catches with unexpected emotion. The words I was going to choose don’t seem to work. _Magnificent. Wonderful. Beautiful. Amazing._ He’s all those things, but to see him now, in the flesh, after so long, I cannot summon up the mental clarity I used to pass my exams.

He grabs my hand and hurriedly pulls me behind the stands to a private spot. We look around and our lips meet, and I kiss him like a man dying of thirst. He pulls me up against him and I feel the hardness of him, muscles formed and perfected by hours in a pool. Layer upon layer, the deepest formed from eighteen hour days on a submarine in the Pacific.

It feels like it always did. I can still feel the river water dripping from his chin to my face. His earthy scent surrounding me. I am becoming intoxicated by the memory, but he pulls away, his eyes hooded with lust and he whispers, “Where are you staying?”

“Queen’s Gate,” I reply.

“I’ll be there. Wait for me.” He gestures behind us to the parade of reporters and cameras. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”

He gives me another kiss, making my body want more, to be more satisfied than this, but he strides over to the group gathered by the pool, turning once more to flash me a grin.

I missed that. I really, really missed that.

On my way back to my hotel, I see London is still rising from the ashes. I see a few girls ride bicycles past a pile of bricks that used to be homes. Cranes are erected by Big Ben and workers jump down from trucks, cigarettes dangling from dusty faces. Piles of sheet metal and stone are being staged to rebuild. Revving engines, rubber tires, and flatbeds haul away the destruction. It could have been worse. It could have been much, much worse.

I didn’t see this side of it. And I never saw Japan before or after either. All I saw was blue. Sometimes gray when a typhoon came through and our fleet was bounced around to the point no one could do a damn thing except hang on like hell and wait for it to pass. I served on the _S.S. Cardinal_ when it embarked from Honolulu carrying aircraft and bombs. Finny went below the sea and I stayed above. They separated us after all. I vomited for a week straight before I grew used to the buoyancy of the ocean. I kissed the black sands of Punaluʻu the day we docked for the final time. I was worn and thin like old leather and Finny was nowhere to be seen.

I searched for him in San Diego, and he searched for me in Los Angeles. It wasn’t until my official discharge in Phoenix that I finally saw him. He was pale from months and months without sunlight. His hair clipped above his ears official and clean. I did not recognize him at first, but when I did it felt as if my legs might buckle beneath me and a typhoon might slam me to the ground. We forgot where we were, running to each other, embracing in a fit of tearful relief.

It’s true: we always find each other.

And here we are again.

It’s early evening when he arrives and we have dinner at the hotel. He’s recognized by about four dozen people, gushing young ladies and proud servicemen. I pull a Chesterfield from my pack and light it - the habit ingrained from long anxious months at sea - and let him have his moment. He signs autographs and smiles and smiles and I cannot help but to feel so much pride.

Because he’s mine.

Every day and every night, he’s mine.

Locked up in my room after dark, we take our time. I hold back and he tests my restraint with his soft touches and strong arms. I kiss the bend of his elbow. His lips graze over my wrists. My fingertips find the three-inch scar on his chest. He says it’s not really a battle wound; only there because one of his mates lost his shit and began stabbing at imaginary enemies, the blade slicing across Finny’s perfect skin as he tried to stop him. I kiss every inch of it and thank God it didn’t go any deeper. I learned to thank God a lot, many times, and I will continue to do so every time those emerald eyes find mine.

We don’t even bother to turn off the lights. I want to see him and he wants to see me. He makes love to me, his thrusts slow and deep, my face nuzzled into the skin of this throat. A silver medal hero that can part the waves, he dives into my heart, into my body and makes his home. I grab his hips, his eyes squeezing shut, my mouth falling open, and I’m going to love him all my life. The promises we keep. The words we say. The wars we fight. We have to believe in something. I feel summertime at Devon, and I want to plant trees. I want to plant one for me and him. This is what I believe in. Holy days and liturgy, I believe in this.

We’re covered in sweat afterward. Noisy cars and trams honk and ride outside the windows. He gets up to open one, the heady scent of desire mixing with car exhaust, and shuts off the lights. I make a joke about RKO following him here and taking a candid shot of Phineas the Swimmer naked in front of a hotel window. He laughs, the same laugh from years before, and my heart unfolds into the size of this room.

He lays beside me and strokes my face. “Do you feel like a shadow?”

I consider it. “No.”

“So, you think we can manage this. All this?”

“I want to.” I shift so we are nose-to-nose. His eyes close. “If we managed the war, I think we can manage just about anything.”

He breathes my name and kisses me. This is the first time we’ve been alone in almost a year. I studied for my B.A. in Literature at LSU while he trained in Orlando. The arrangement wasn’t perfect, but I knew what I’d gotten myself into. I think I knew the day he snatched my hand to keep me from falling out of a tree.

“Did your folks come?” I ask him.

He rolls onto his back, his sigh heavy. “No.”

“They can’t possibly still be that angry.”

“Not angry. They’re…proud.” He looks at me. “I think they always wanted me to be more like you. Degrees last forever, but a medal can rust. Something like that.”

Our abrupt departure from Devon six years ago upset his mother so much she nearly left his father for what he’d forced her only son to do. At some point, I don’t know when, they reconciled and were happy to see him come home after the war in one piece. His choice to swim in the Olympics rather than go to college, however, disappointed them greatly. I don’t understand it myself. Who wouldn’t be proud to see their son competing for their country? It wasn’t what they wanted for him, but he did it anyway. He must have learned a few things on that submarine.

My parents did absolutely nothing. I haven’t seen them in three years. My service to my country has yet to pull them from the anger and resentment that I ended my expensive education so suddenly. Not even my B.A. has been much of a peace offering. I really only did it to please them, but _I_ chose my major - one they didn’t approve of - and the terse, few-and-far-between letters I receive practically drip with their disdain. There are always consequences. This is mine.

“Don’t they know how famous you’re going to be?” I tell him. “You already are. Imagine if you’d won the gold.”

He chuckles. “I’m not famous. And there’s always the next Olympics.” He pauses. “If that’s okay with you.”

“Why does it have to be okay with me?” I smile. “You’d just do it anyway, and you should.”

He scoots closer to me, which is almost impossible since we’re practically glued to each other already. His hand slides over my stomach. “Look at you. Even after all that studying, you’re still as strong as you were when you got off that ship.” His smile is wide. “You impress me.”

I trace his lips with a finger. “And you’re dodging my question.”

He sighs. “I was thinking…” He stops there and chews on a lip for a second. “I was thinking we could live in Orlando. I know you wanted to go to New York, but I want to try at the next Olympics. It gets so cold in New York and there are swimming pools all over Florida. So…” He looks nervous. “Just four years? Maybe five?”

I don’t say anything right away. I’d expected we’d have this discussion at some point, but my silence prompts him to speak again. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to. I just thought since your schooling is over, and there are teaching positions all over the place, it might work for us. People might think we’re strange, two young men living alone, but if you don’t want to do that - I mean, I wasn’t assuming that. I mean, it’s fine if you do, but I’d understand if you don’t - but I can help you find a house, or -”

“Finny,” I interrupt.

“Yes?”

I gently cup his chin in my hand. “I’d move to the moon to be with you.”

He laughs. “But there’s no water on the moon.”

“I’d put some there for you.”

He rolls me on my back and perches on top of me. “How did I get to be the luckiest man on earth to have you in my life?”

“You made me jump off a tree.”

His eyes sparkle like the turquoise pool water at Wembley. He kisses me then says, “There’s one place I want to go first when we get back to the States.”

“Where?” I ask.

* * *

It looks the same.

Every building. The sidewalks. The rising spire of the chapel. Devon hasn’t changed at all. We take a lap around the athletic field and visit the pool house. Finny’s presence disrupts the swimming team’s practice, but no one is complaining. The boys stare at him open-mouthed and the coach goes to find the school photographer for a picture of Finny with the team.

While they arrange it, I stare into the water and remember the night we fell in love. It wasn’t that long ago, but it feels as if I’ve lived two lifetimes since then. I pull out a cigarette, roll up my pants, and stick my feet in the water. I fell in love here, we said it here, the walls have absorbed it. It’s a good thing for us they can’t talk. And I fondly remember counting all of Finny’s laps, his utter determination. He was desperate. Then I was desperate, and I mildly think there was nothing to worry about really. I look over at him standing by the swimming team, everyone flashing a huge smile for the photographer. We would have been together anyway. How else could this have unfolded? How else could our story have gone?

There’s a memorial by the library. I find Leper’s name. I heard he lost his mind and deserted somewhere in Spain. As far as anyone knows, he’s dead. I can’t decide how I feel about it. Brinker went to Tokyo after the war ended and got himself a Japanese wife. I hear they live in Portland and Brinker is a fish farmer. Or something like that. I don’t really miss any of them at all.

We find the river. We find the tree. The branch over the water is gone. One of the boys on the swim team told us the school had it sawed off when a boy fell from it and broke his leg four years ago. There’s rumors someone pushed him, and I think: what a cruel thing to do. I guess there was no one there to save him. No one there to take his hand and keep him from falling.

The hand that finds mine by that tree has saved me a thousand times. In many ways. Finny stands against the tree and smiles at me. I smile back, I look around, and press myself into him for a kiss. The memory of it ignites me. The both of us here, meeting in secret, kissing just like this, panicked and impassioned, overwhelmed with what had grown between us. And it grows even now. Stronger than it ever was.

We have the ground to hold us up. We have this tree to give us shade. We have a gentle breeze that stirs the leaves and ripples over the river. We have these two hearts, beating in the dark summer night, and we have a home. We have life, we have our love, and summer will last forever and ever more.

THE END


End file.
